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Lesson Info

Capturing Stories

Now, right before lunch, we talked about some of the problems with traditional scrap booking process and how we can flip that on its head a little bit and start with the story versus starting with the photo, and we had a lot of questions from people at home, and one of the big questions is ok, how do I get my story? What do I write about what I talk about and that's what we're going to be talking about now? So when we talk about journaling, if you're not a natural writer, which many of us don't feel that we are, it can cause you to constrict a little bit, you hyperventilate breathe a little bit faster because the words are oftentimes the hardest part of what people are adding to their page now just in our audience here. Or do you consider yourself a journal or our does the idea of drilling make it take a deep breath? Or how do you feel about that? When when we talk about journaling? What do you what do you feel like? I like journaling, but my biggest roadblock is I sit down, I look my ...

page not sure should I listed out, should I ride it out, should I type it out, should I? You know, run it through my printer the choice has become mind numbing and I end up slapping on a picture of this though is that whole black hole of options again that we talked about earlier do I handwrite it you know how much is enough? How much should I tell exactly? Yeah yeah anybody else any but he feel a little bit like they aren't the journal they'd like to be or the storytelling is difficult with the words or is that something that comes very natural to you? Jane, what about you? I think that part of the problem is I'm not a perfectionist in the verbal things so when I write it and I smell something wrong or do it and then somebody comes back two months later goes did you know he has built that run? I don't care good for you for you you can always tell him scrapbook your own pain but what are you spell check angela, how about you, it's? The thing that I leave to the end often times when I just like we were talking about earlier when I focus on the pictures and so that changing that mindset of, you know it's just as important if not more and then once like like I think thing is too like when I when I create a page that I really like visually figuring out where to put what everything that I want to say on there, and and then I end up just leaving it are putting some right very right and it's interesting, too, when we start with story, when we put that emphasis on story as I'm presenting to you all, sometimes it can make it even harder to write the words because we realize how important they are. And so hopefully I'm going to give you some strategies today that I'll get you through any of the writers blocks and help you on the path in to capturing your stories in an authentic manner, an authentic manner for you. As we looked at some of the layouts before lunch, there was all different type of story telling going on from hand written to lift it's tio typed up journaling two written out, let lengthy journaling and the options it's not one size fits all it's really, what works for you some pages may you may feel like you need a little more room, a little more space, other pages, a few sentences, maybe enough and again it it serves the story and it doesn't have to be the same every single time, so I am a writer it's really how I've identified myself from a young age, and so the words have never been difficult for me to come up with it, but I still when I started scrapbooking, I thought it had to be that pages of journaling that really didn't fit my style. I'm pretty much short to the punch lists I love things like that bullet points, and once I realized that that's, my style that's what works for me, it's ok? And I still have that freedom to add more if I want tio, but I don't have to do what anybody else is doing, and I do get a lot of people who approached me about scrap book and they say, I don't know what to say. I have no idea I sit down to write about you know how much my first grandchild meant to me, and I just don't know where to start and it's funny, because if I asked you to write the story of let's, say how you and your husband met a common one, I talked a little bit about my story earlier, I just asked you were sit down at lunch? I said, angela, tell me how you met your husband or, you know, that sort of thing. You just start telling me a story, you wouldn't be like, the did I use the right word? Was that a jared and it should have been something else I was gonna split infinite, you wouldn't worry about that. But as soon as I asked people to write, they start getting really answer, and it might go back to seventh grade my seventh grade english teacher with mrs wald and, you know, with the red pen, I didn't double space, I didn't do this it it and I think it brings up a lot of feelings like that in us, and so I want everybody to be able to relax when they're telling their stories, just as you might express yourself aurally in a certain manner and use certain words like I'm from california, so I say, oh my gosh, you know, we're totally even though I'm forty five years old and still the torah totally that's okay, that's, part of my style and you know I can I can embrace that so again, if I asked you to tell me a story, you wouldn't have a hard time, but suddenly, when I ask you to write that story, we get, we get like this like, what do I say? We get all all speechless and the what one thing I want you to do is replace the word journaling with storytelling because sometimes journaling just like scrapbooking, it has certain connotations with that, it means pages of text sort means lengthy descriptions, or it means, you know, literary or something that could be published when in actuality all it is is telling this story so instead of talking about journaling on your page, think of that journaling every time you hear journaling it's really telling this story, and if you go back to that, it'll help you just like we're going to revisit our mission statement if you go back to the idea that journaling is really just about the story, then it kind of makes it ok just like a child at bedtime, you're telling them a story doesn't have to be a work of art, you don't have to use all the right words. It should just be a relaxed part of sharing your sharing with somebody. So what? Insurance with storytelling isn't it's not necessarily writing pages of text? It could be, but by definition, when I say storytelling, it doesn't mean you're going to write a five hundred word essay it's not worrying about your grammar spelling, I tend to be for myself a little bit of a perfectionist on the grammar and spelling that's important to me. But if it's not important to you, it's your scrapbook it's a reflection of you, so don't worry about it and if it is important but you feel like you don't have the skills there, that is what spell check is for have a friend read it over, but don't let that stop you just like a bad handwriting in your mind you think you have bad spelling or something like that? Don't let that stop you from telling your stories. The important thing is the story's, not the grammar or the spelling and it's also nest, not necessarily spending hours and hours. There may come a story that you want to tell like my mom's, her illness in her death, and I want to document that story that's going to take me some time that's not something I'm going to do in a bullet list and I'm gonna put some thought to it and it's going toe take a couple days, probably or even a week or more because there's so many parts of that story I want to tell and it's important, and I want to make sure I'm getting it complete but that's not every page I do. I don't spend hours and hours in fact, the pages I showed you earlier, the gossamer blue kit based layouts that I did during scratch scrapple kimbrough where thirty minutes or less and that includes the journaling and there's still meaningful stories again, there may be times you want to spend more. There may be times you want to spend more on the design of the technique is well, but knowing that you can create a page quickly helps you because it opens up other possibilities to you so I could do a list, I could do it this way, or I could really think about this and spend some time and interview other family members. It just depends on what that story is that you're telling and it's all a matter of what you were trying to accomplish their scrap booking the everyday stories might be quick bullet points sentence year sentence there, and that captures it, and then there may be tough, so those deeper stories as well so again, what it is is really just sharing what's, important and meaningful to you, and that could be something really simple, like how your your dog needs to have a special kind of you can grind turkey sausage for him because you love them so much he's got a special diet or something like that somebody else might think, you know, I'd never do that, but it shows how much you love your dog, so you want to share that on a page or it could be something huge about how you always take a certain route to drop the kids off at school because it goes by the goat farm and they love to look at the goats out there or something like that, but if it means something to you, then it's worth documenting, it doesn't matter what anybody else really thinks about it because it's a slice of your life now something that the biggest piece of advice I have when it comes to scrap bookers, tio, two storytelling and writing and I used to teach writing classes and the one piece of advice that came back to again and again was the fact that if you can talk, you can write. So if you can tell somebody a story about something that's important to you or something that happened to you during the day, you can write a cz well, it's, just a matter of conveying that conversation in a written format rather than inwards and there's. A book by joel saltzman. That's really great it's definitely a more writers, but if this is something you'd like to learn more about, I strongly suggest you pick up the book it's called. If you can talk, you can ten right and it's really just a matter of talking out your stories rather than trying to write them out again. Sometimes it's the spelling that holds us up, or sometimes it's. We can't type as quickly as we think, or, um, so we get held up in the process of our storytelling with words. But if we go back again to this technique that I'm just telling jane a story about this then suddenly everything else drops away because it's so natural to do this and sometimes this isn't natural or were talking about earlier how handwriting can feel really unnatural because we don't do it very much anymore so the fact that we can talk out our stories can really help us so there are number of different ways we talk out our stories now with with the new media and social media so I would just love to hear something ideas from you how do you connect with people in your life that you love sisters, friends, relatives texting yep texting is a big one almost people almost don't call each other anymore do they? What else besides texting facebook, facebook yeah yeah what was that one instagram, instagram? Yeah, the photos and information underneath yet instant message is the message yep yep and in all those manners and I've got a couple more here we do occasionally still use phone calls especially maybe for for our moms and dads are kids grandparent's sometimes they like the phone call and even in person conversations as well. So anyway that you're connecting with people now to share your stories we can mine that conversation that exchange that connection for our scrapbook pages so when you start thinking about what am I going to scrap book you need to look at what you're writing on facebook what you're sharing on a block what you're sitting in an email to a friend what did you just text to somebody what did you mention in the last phone call exchange you had with someone when you were sitting next tio your dad in the waiting room of the doctor's office what did you guys talk about? All those things are right for us to go in and pull out the little nuggets the little golden nuggets that could go on our scrapbook pages and not every phone call is going to be scrapped worthy not every text is going to be something we're going to want to document, but those are all places we can look for those stories and the great thing about things like facebook and email and text is that they're already and text format so it makes it really easy for us to go back and cut and paste to do a screen shot and I'm gonna be sharing some of those with you to show you processes for how you can take something from a text, put it on a scrapbook page and help tell your story. So does that make sense that the other thing too is you have the other decide? Oh good point yes, yes, yes on a text in particular, email exchange or facebook with the comment right, you get you get the other person's perspective and you don't have to go track him down and get him tio ad in their perspective. That's a great one. Yeah, so does this make sense? Is this ok? Good, good, good. How about our chat? Yeah. You know, we were just asking people how they connect and a lot of the same things that we heard here. A lot of people saying chats facebook, snapchat, texting instagram this one is good from gina's e they say that they take screenshots of our face time conversations with their granddaughter. Yes, don't even turn that video and it's something that you can actually take a screen shot and printed and kind of bring it out of the digital world as well. And they're eventually being people on chair earlier in the day, the chatsworth well sharing their facebook with each other and then, you know, creating these communities. Yes, scrappers yes, something onto your facebook feel good. Come down. Okay, so this first one here is an example of text it's, hard for you to read and I'll read it for you. But basically it was it was created during scrapbook improv, and the challenge was to get the journaling from facebook, so remember, I'm doing this in thirty minutes, and that includes choosing the photo designing the page everything else this is a picture of my niece and her husband and what I had done is I had photos that I had taken of them at their wedding, but they had also shared photos of their wedding on facebook, so I went to my nieces facebook page and took some of the comments that people had had mentioned on her facebook page and said kalinda in it means how beautiful in spanish and she and her husband are both fluent spanish speakers and they have spent time in spanish speaking countries so that's kind of a symbolic element for them and it's what brought them together originally and it says she gets a sense of humor from his dad a wedding in california? What else? Just, uh, thing one and thing tio love this and those were all just things that came right off of their facebook page. Is this really like show stopping page? No, not necessarily but it's a super fun way to document a wedding beyond just the picture of the bride and groom and those weren't even my words those where somebody else's of words for for a facebook from the facebook status and it was just it was fun for me to go outside what I might consider a normal approach to my journaling and it's a fund page it kind of goes in with the sense of the fun event too um, I also did a page, uh, gonna pull it out here in I don't know if it's better to get it on the overhead shot. I'll leave it here. This is one that I completed just the other day, so didn't make it in the slide show, but it's it's about a text exchange that my son and I had, and I did a screen capture of this, and it shows the first thing my son says to me is, hey, babe, on I said yes, and he goes awkward. He thought he was texting his girlfriend, any text, mom instead. So it's just about that, and I titled the page awkward, and then I just wrote a little journaling. I said, nothing like getting an email from your teenage son that starts hey, babe, they're definitely risks to texting late at night. Whoops and it's, a very simple, easy page quickly put together. It actually has a similar background to one of the others that we saw in my my kind of before shots with the scraps in the background, but it capture so many things, the fact that he has a girlfriend, that they text with each other, that you know the pitfalls of new social media, and it just makes me laugh, and again, no, no. Photo per se on the page, but it does have ah does have the graphic of our our screen shot there are text chat there, so I really like that one this next one is a conversation that I had with my nine year old actually at that point in time she was about six and it's another example of when I took a photo that didn't necessarily accompany the conversation but was taken at the same period of time and it's kelly from the back seat of the car mom this is how it goes first comes god in your heart then the president's, then your family then you're friends, but I'm stopping an aunt frances she didn't even send me a birthday present so she's only seven but she's got the whole world figured out and it's just such a little snippet of her nothing huge, nothing earth shattering but it just makes me smile and it goes really well with the photo and I also had a photo that didn't necessarily have a story attached, so I paired them up and now I've got a great page. This is one of my absolute favorites and I apologize the photo is not a little clearer for you, but it's called c s I am a I live in massachusetts and I was telling someone this story earlier today and it's one of my favorite pages of all time came in cali was about four years old and she had one of those flashlights that are almost blew like a led light and she had her bare on the floor and she was shining it over him I said, what are you doing? She says I'm looking for bodily fluid, I said and then journaling maybe I should make sure that cs eyes off when she comes into the room but it just cracks me up because it tells about c s I, which is one of my big love that's like my favorite tv show ever but it also shows how little pitchers have big ears and she's there with the light scanning it over the there it just cracks me up every time so you can see there that it's really easy to take conversations were already having take facebook posts were already making take blogged post text exchanges that were already in the middle of and use those under scrapbook page and it actually it's like dell why wouldn't we do that? Because we're scrapple carol life so why should we have to go orchestrate some situation so we can get these conversation there already occurring so let's grab them where they are and it make it make it easy on ourselves? So what about you? Have you done a page where you have taken journaling or a story or any kind of text exchange or anything like that? Have you done? I I have a couple photos of text exchanges and they're sitting in my pile to be teo, you got got the photos for, you know, that's the first time whenever somebody comes to visit us, I make them email themselves about what we did the previous day, no before coffee wait and then I just copy that, you know, just I was really work no coffee for you you're a big social media person and you blogged, and so you must pull a lot to step off of your text things like almost everything I facebook I'm case bookings so that I can put it in a scramble, my kids or hilarious, and they say the weirdest stuff, so I've been on it facebook so everybody can laugh with me and then later I go back and pull it from facebook. I also do the the screen capping of texts a lot too. I did that while we were sitting here a while ago too, because my son texted me that he missed me, which is not normal s o I screen cap that so I can put it in with the scrapbooking from event that's great that's! Wonderful! Um yeah, I mean a blog's, so I definitely pull journaling from my blawg I also on when my son was born got in the habit of my right to three sentences every single day about his day his life, his accomplishments, his illnesses is whatever right and so you know, he's turning eight in a few weeks and I have every single day well no I pulled from journaling from that all the time what was it one thousand seven hundred ninety five days? I was using that right? Yeah that's wonderful that's great without you angela I have a couple of text exchanges today had printed out on dh then I've done I've found a really good way to do it but I've done facebook posts because I just think again like putting other people's comment eds and their thoughts so you know, I haven't found a good waited capture the entire thread but attempted to do that on a few post on and add that into screen captures they print out so well I was actually really surprised that I mean, they look so good resolution wise I've been really pleased with the way they print out when I catch right? But when it's a really long right and you're yeah, we're trying to get everybody you know, right? Yeah, right so that like kind of been a challenge, but I've done it a great game what about you? A couple of facebook in her inner reactions and interactions with people and just, you know, just putting him off the, you know, just doing a screen print of my computer rather than my phone, right? Yeah, I have most of it and one that's great that's, wonderful and it's there and it's got the date on it, and it just makes it so easy it really does. It really makes it very easy. So here's some ways to keep track of your stories and ways to prepare yourself. So when you're ready to start documenting those stories, you've already got some of the groundwork done. Keep a running list of stories, and that could be a word document that could be a file on your phone or just an email you send yourself and just add on to the bottom and send it to yourself again, or most email programs have a notes section now where you can just add notes, it could be a physical notebook could be the little pocket cards. There's a. It could be just a scrap of paper or writing in your daily journal calendar anything like that, just making sure you're writing it down in some way and it's some place you can find it because there's nothing worse than knowing you wrote it down. Somewhere, and you just have no idea where, so pick a consistent way to do that and could be a special journal that you use and take time every evening to jet down stories or posted notes you slap in there, it doesn't have to be fancy it's just whatever you're gonna use regularly, and you'll know where to go for that and just make sure you take notes so when something happens, you know, uploaded to facebook quickly, or send yourself an email or record a voice memo are whatever it can tell it's in an email to your friend, telling them just some way that you're taking a few critical notes down. So whether you scrapbook at that afternoon or a month or a year later, whatever it is, you've got the gist of what you wanted to see, say, the funny phrase that your child used or the funny thing, that so and so did that kind of thing, like that drink in the wine that cracked me up, like you just gaveled the wine, and everybody was looking at you, like, what are those uncool people doing? You know, it was just such a little detail and a writing we talk about telling details, the one little detail that kind of sums up the whole event at the whole person, and looking for that one thing that resonates and captures the emotion of the event or the memory that you want to share that's really useful index cards, you can get those spiral bound you can get him individually just any way that you can tio record those stories record the important details and then nowhere to refer back to it and that's the critical thing and a lot of people do that pocket scrapbooking now and sometimes what I'll do in my spread is if I haven't gotten to it yet in these tend to be weekly spreads with pocket scrapbooking. I'll write it on a sticky note and put it on the appropriate week, so I'll remember the things that happen, so when I get to that week because it is a chronological exercise project for me, I'll know which we get went with, and then I've got it right there and I could just write it on a card and be ready to go, so those are some easy ways to capture it. Now what I'd like to do is give you a little assignment right now is just in your workbooks to write down ten ideas for stories, and I could have said three or it could have said five and ten mike. Seem a lot right now just off the top of your head but sometimes it's not till you get to six or seven that you get to one that's really like, oh wow, you have that's cool so it doesn't have to be deep it doesn't have to be meaningful in terms of like the world or it could be so it could be ah habit that you have every day or your morning routine or your child's favorite pair of shoes that they refused to wear anything else right now or do something that's come up for you today as we've been moving through our time together, something that's happened here or something that you've seen a page by somebody like the my v v page by connie and you want to make sure you do a page about your grandparent's or something like that or baseball or whatever it might be, so just take a few minutes now and then we also invite you at home to do so as well and added into the chat room and and we'll we'll interact we like to interact definitely no, I just saw a great comment that I had never thought of it I'd love to share it this one is from traveling stamps and we were talking about in a different ways that people are connecting with people in their in their families, their friends so they say I have a friend who created a secret facebook page that's private to document her kid's lives it's a brilliant idea and she wants to copy it so you can have your own personal facebook page it doesn't have to be seen by everybody but you can still keep track of everything that your children that's fantastic I've heard people doing that with blog's when they have a private blogged that maybe they just share with grand parents or family members and they document things there that maybe they don't want to share with the wider world um it's password protected or just hidden someplace and I think that's a great idea I wanted kids can say that she's staying in secret for the kids I have a secret word private only have been invited her whole world can't find vice got the man who opened up an email account for his kid when the kid was born and every week sent the kid and email and then on the eighteenth birthday gave the kid the pastor to the email so there was a email from everyone that's so sweet darn it I didn't do that next life that's your testicle way have so many different ways to do something like this where their children you know it's it's the beauty of all the technology in the beauty and maybe the curse of it having to now you have that flexibility to set up accounts like that right? I think the pressure comes in where people think they have to do it all I have to have a twitter account and an instagram and ah pinches board and facebook and this and that and there's always a new one every week that's coming up it seems like well, what I recommend for people to do is pick the one you enjoy using most if it's just blogging been blogged and do it regularly enjoy it don't feel like you've got to be on twitter if you can't stand twitter it's really again personal preference and what you're going to use consistently because you try to do something that just doesn't fit with your personality it's not going to be fun and chances are you'll stop doing it big dilemma in that I've been asked to write down some stories from the beginning of when I started my rowing and I have all these stories and I tell my stories all the time I just can't seem to get the pen to the paper or get on the computer and do it I mean this has been like six months I have these stories and I tell them but give me some skill to actually get them down that's what I'm looking when you say you have them and you tell them now and you're sharing them now how are you sharing them now being a wonderful storyteller standing there and telling them, you know, I have a captive audience sits in a boat I haven't way right, right? So like on there they're interesting stories, you know, because it's all about their hobby that they're doing and I have no problem sharing them but getting them physically, some right? I'm having a real problem with that. I don't know where it's just like mike, I'm afraid my hands going cramp a couple options one would be to record them and just even to make the recording stand alone that the recording becomes the documentation you put one of those q r codes on there and then people can you can upload it to youtube and make it private, but then people can link to it from there there are ways tio cloak that so it's not just out they're in in the entire world unless you want it to be that would be one option or to record them and then have them transcribed. If you go to a site like fiverr dot com f v e r r dot com, they will do transcriptions and arrange from ten minutes to fifteen minutes for like five dollars every every service on the side is five dollars, which is why it's called fiber and you could get these transcribed pretty inexpensively and see how that works for you and the they'll give you the transcribed version and you can either edited or just put it in as is and but that sounds like the barrier is just that difference between speaking and writing so I would just focus right there. And how can you get over that barrier that's what I need to do and I and other people to yeah, yeah. That's a good one, though. Yeah. Driver dot com they have they have amazing stuff. He can get everything from your face edged unas green of rice to, you know, transcriptions for five bucks. So everything you could think of you have, like, miss piggy sing happy birthday via video to whoever I mean it's wild. Definitely. Just for just for entertainment value she got for her to come and see the options there. Okay. How are the story's going? Good. Okay, we'll wrap it up in about a couple more seconds here. I love lists. I got to say more lists, the better and it's. So cool when you get across. I e I du on. Some of them. Definitely. Yeah. And I have one page where kelly was home from school for the day they had a teacher in service and I needed to work, and so she decided, was home school day and she made a whole schedule for us like nine to nine fifteen we're going to do this and edited it up and I just put that right in the pages the journaling because it was her handwriting and it showed what she wanted to like nine thirty snuggle and think this is a good school it was really sweet that's really sweet little interesting tucci scraps is saying that speech to take software is useful straight to the computer and you had a story and there will just pop out yeah dragon does that but then also siri on the iphone I don't know what the android equivalent would be sometimes the voice recognition is better than others but phones do have that capability to teo teo do the speech to text but dragon naturally speaking is the kind of the leading software program that you can get for a computer oh really others to talk to text didn't know that you're full of interesting tidbits today always okay let's wrap up the stories jane did anything come out interesting for you that you thought oh my gosh I hadn't thought of doing that before there's like there's a couple of one of them is the worst mom in the world story I think we all have that a story that I told a lot but I've never stopped looked it in ages ago but it's still gonna be good great and then my son in law plays in a band on and I have pictures of him playing the sax phone. But I don't have a story about his band that he's in now and all that. So all those ones that I I right away. Good, good, good. I love that when one is really it sounds like it's a little more specific. And the other one could lead to a number of different stories as well. I like that, angela. Um, no one that I I never something that's part of my day every single day, and I don't. And I just never father described it, but it's, my dog and how we acquired her so it's kind of a cool story. But and I never thought. And I have lots of pictures of her. Never never got a story down. That's. Great that's. Wonderful. Thank you. A lot of the ones on my list for kind of the everyday. Like what we eat. Yeah. You know what our meals are and where we eat them and how we eat them and things like what our house looks like right now, you know, you take pictures of your new house, but you don't necessarily take pictures. And this is how it looks right way things like that um the car that were driving things like that I don't have pictures of right first car I drove yeah yeah those are great and those are the ones we were talking about earlier they did they can change in a snap and like the car if you let's say you trade in your car you've missed your window of opportunity actually to get that photo and then you're going through other photos seen if it's in the background somewhere something like that so it's good that's great that's great tracy uh you know, I tell a lot of our story but my parents just both me recently moved out of state and they both dumped just I have seven or eight boxes of old pictures of people who don't know who they are or pictures old pictures of us are old pictures of my parents so I was thinking it would be fun teo as I scanned them in to email them to my parents and how might my parents email back the stories of the photos and then just sure in a coffee and pace what they say right directly into the scrapbook that get another voice that's great that's wonderful one of the upcoming sections it's talking about the other other people's voices so I think that that's a great way to do it especially if they're willing to participate it seems like the people in my life like do I have to they go into that that resistance mode you she wants me to write an essay and they won't have a jewish they won't have a choice like no coffee coming for you how about you? I realized when I did this group because I didn't have one hundred pictures that this amount here huh is me and my shadow I mean literally that's what? Fifty pictures and I thought, you know what? I've taken all these pictures but I've never why do I take a picture of my shadow wherever I am and I've nevers I don't know why so if you're right, you think look at why I do this in different ways I mean that's cool so that's what I put down that was I like it I like it and that's what that is I love it, I love it I mean, a lot of people take feet pictures, right? Yeah, I mean, how many feet pictures do you see online all the time and it's just kind of, you know, it's a way of capturing without you're putting yourself in your scrapbook this when maybe it's not easy to take a selfie picture, you don't have somebody else there, you don't have to worry about having a bad hair day or whatever, so my camera over the years and take these hilarious selfies before selfie was a word and I would go teo plug in my camera to my computer and killings crazy pictures of her and I really would love to just do a page document how she sneaks the camera way just so I will get a surprise and I turned it on and find her photos there that's great I love that I love how it ties in with the photo the story is really about the photo that's great that's wonderful! I think that when you start looking at your life in this manner the story just start coming and you think, oh, I got a scrapbook better I should skeptic batter you go into your closet and we'll talk a little bit later about looking at your life as a detective. Like if you didn't live here, what would you know, which would you notice about what would be unusual but this family? What would be different like? Probably every family has cereal in their cupboard, but does every family have, you know, six boxes of all the three kinds of cheerios because everybody likes it or something like that? You start thinking about it in a different manner and it really it could be really fun to think about your life that way, and suddenly the monday becomes really interesting because you realize just because I do it every day doesn't mean it's boring it might seem like it in the moment, but when you look at it from a little bit of objectivity it's it's fun do we have anybody in the in the tech world chime in with some stories that they would like to tell? I mean, I think that exercises like this are really great because for instance, in the chat room this is from jen lenny they say I've tried to get photos from others, but I never get anything back. I had sent pictures out when my second daughter was born, but no one seemed to save the pictures. I know with me purse me, I don't take a lot of pictures myself. I know I have lots of friends who've taken photos of million things I want to remember hard to track them down, so I think it's important to kind of do something like this and sort of assess where those pictures are, how to put the story together and I think a lot of the people in the chat room seem to agree, you know, we had a couple of people and checked talking about losing their photos on a computer and that's happened to me twice on that's when you go timing through facebook going is anyone identifies on and then you realize how many photos there are maybe you didn't know about down line, but that's heart wrenching, isn't it? When you lose your stone on just on that, you know, we were talking about speaking into the into the computer. Katie scott has a really interesting one, I think, probably for quoting other people, even because she's saying, if you make a youtube video, it automatically transcribes for you, so you do have to spell check it, but it's, easy and free, and I'm not sure whether that works with all the youtube videos, but if it did and you had videos of kids and things right, then you would have quite some things, right? Yeah, I mean, they're definitely add ons and third party things you could use. Take advantage of all this technology that we have most of it for free at our fingertips right now, it's. Not it's a lot easier. You don't have to go in there and manually transcribed things, so use that to your advantage.