Insert Clever Title Here

Somehow in the course of scrapbooking these past few months, I now receive email newsletters from Creating Keepsakes and other magazines with tips - and of course, suggestions for things to buy. Yes, I actually DO ignore the sales parts of the emails.

One of the articles from Creating Keepsakes (a very good magazine/website, by the way) this time around was called "A Busy Scrapbooker's Survival Guide." I do not claim, by any stretch, to be as busy as some of these women are, who scrapbook AND have kids and who work for these scrapbooking companies. But one thing this author said really stood out and confronted the Perfectionist in me: the concept of "good enough."

As a Perfectionist, I have a problem with "good enough." It's one reason why I try very hard to create the perfect, witty title for each post (unfortunately, frequently resulting in titles that sound forced or obvious). I don't want to go to a salon for my tri-monthly hair coloring and walk out with "good enough." I don't want to order well-done meat at a restaurant and have the server bring me "good enough." What if Jesus, instead of dying on the cross, had pricked his finger and said, "Good enough"?!

But this scrapbooking article said that, in a different context of course:

Ali’s notes:
Adopt a philosophy of “good enough.” For me, this means keeping the focus on the story. “Good enough” means you’ve told your story to your own personal satisfaction. Maybe the design isn’t exactly what you first envisioned. Maybe your handwriting isn’t perfect. “Good enough” is about adopting the perspective that, years from now, people will care most about the photos and the words. The rest is window dressing.

I have to say, she has a point. I just began working on the scrapbook for our Madrid trip, and it took DAYS to make decisions on what I wanted to do for the first page. Granted, it's the first page, not some page buried in the middle, but still. And it IS a kick-butt first page (even John said it was awesome), but still. Working on the London scrapbook, I finished about one page a day on average.

At the rate I'm going now, we'll be visiting our grandchildren before the book is finished. (No, that's NOT a hint!)

My perfectionist nature is just going to have to accept that with scrapbooking, "good enough" IS good enough. Now I need to work at applying this principle to other areas of my life (hair coloring excluded, of course).