Chore finished!

In 2007 I wrote my personal history, which is basically my life's story. It starts when I was born, and since I don't have my own memories from that time I used a journal that my mom kept for me where she wrote about my progress, funny stories, what I was like and other things about me. That journal proved to be very useful so that I could use it to document the first few years of my life. Then I started incorporating my own memories as I grew older. If someone reads my personal history they could learn all they wanted to know about Heather, which is exactly why I wrote it.

Several years ago I wanted to know more about my grandpa and if he had written a personal history, then I would've been able to find out who he was and what he's experienced in his life. Fortunately, he's still alive so I took advantage of this and I wrote his life story for him. I didn't just do this for myself, but also for the rest of my family so that they can know grandpa as well. He's 89 years old and has had such an interesting life. I'm glad I know him so much better after writing his life story.

Here's another example of why I think it's important to keep a personal history. My dad wrote his personal history, and when I read it a few years ago I learned so many interesting things about him, and it was fun to hear him talk about his life in his own words. I especially treasure it since Dad's dead, and I don't have the convenience of being able to talk to him.

I don't have any children of my own, but I do have lots of nieces and nephews, and one day they might want to know more about my life in greater detail. That's one of the reasons I wrote my personal history, and why I'm so passionate about journaling, blogging and documenting my life.

Here's where the chore completion comes in: I update my personal history each year and I write a detailed synopsis of what has happened in my life and in my family's life that year, as well as major world events and things like that. I hate writing the update and I definitely look at doing it as a chore, but I rather do it each year then to have a decade's worth of stuff or more to catch up on at one time. I finished my update this afternoon, complete five pages of pictures. Whew! Finished for another year!

Happy medium between blogging and journaling

One of the things that I'm going to try to improve on this year is journaling. I've been keeping a consistent journal on my laptop for the past four years, and I usually write once or twice a week. However, my journaling has been harder to manage now that I've started a blog. My blog is kind of like a journal in and of itself, but I'm trying to find that happy medium between blogging and journaling so that I can have a great blog and a great journal.

Another thing that makes finding this happy medium hard is that I love blogging and have fun doing it, but I don't enjoy journaling near as well and I definitely look at it as more of a chore. It would be easy to ditch the journal and just stick to blogging, but the reason I keep journaling is because my journal is where I record my deepest thoughts and feelings; the things that are probably of the most value. So I'll keep journaling even though I don't particularly like it because I feel that maybe one day someone will find value in the things that are written in my journals.

Finally finished!

I've been seriously slacking on my blogging lately but it's had to take a bit of the back seat for the past few months while I've been working on my family slideshow for 2010. I've actually been working on several slideshows the past few months. A slideshow doesn't take all that long to compile, but it's the countless hours of watching it over and over again as I tweak it to perfection. It probably shouldn't take me so long, but I want it to be absolutely perfect in every way. Even after watching it dozens of times, sometimes something will pop out at me even though I've seen it so much. I truly spend hours carefully scrutinizing every aspect so that I make sure everything is 99.9% perfect in the end. (I would say 100% perfect, but I don't think this is attainable since I'm sure there's something that could be better. I can settle for 99.9%!)

I started doing slideshows for the first time last year. I recently went back and watched last year's slideshow and I could tell a definite improvement in my work because I was noticing things right and left that wouldn't be acceptable anymore! It just made me smile because last year I thought my slideshow was pretty much perfect, but now that I watch it with another year of experience under my belt, and I see how far I've come!

The slideshow is 31 minutes long. I tried really hard to keep it short, but that's a tall order when I have so many good photographs to choose from. I don't know the exact number of pictures I had to work with this year, but I would say I probably had at least 3000 pictures to sift through. It's really hard to narrow the pictures down, too, since so many of them are good and have a story behind them. This year's slideshow has 854 pictures in it, 13 video clips and nine songs. I can't wait for my family to watch it, and I'm just glad that so many of us will be celebrating Christmas here at my mom's house so that we can all watch it together.

Hooray for documenting my life – it's seriously like a full-time job. I get on my computer almost every day of the week depending on what's going on, and I stay on it all day. I almost always get back on my computer after I'm back in bed for the night. I'd say I'm on my computer a good eight to 10 hours a day. Although I'm disabled, I definitely have a busy and productive life and I feel so blessed that I can spend my days doing something I love.

My new toy

Yesterday I bought myself a new toy -- a new camera. I've been wanting a new camera for quite a while because I've been becoming increasingly more dissatisfied with my camera over the past year. I feel like taking pictures, blogging and documenting my life is my "job" so I want a really nice camera to help me be able to achieve this.

I've been reading a lot about different cameras on the internet for the past several weeks and I just wish I knew more about cameras because I don't want to make a mistake and buy something that I'll ultimately be disappointed with. I think I've made a great choice, though, and I can't wait for my new camera to arrive!

Needless to say, cameras have my mind a lot for the past several weeks as I've been researching them and contemplating what I want. I've even been dreaming about them! A few nights ago I had a dream that my dad was alive again and I was showing him my new camera. (I often have dreams where my dad is back from the dead and I'm showing him all of the things that have been invented since his death.)

It would actually be really nice if my dad were here to help me choose the right camera for me and teach me how to use it. Anyone who knew my dad knows how into technology he was (like computers and cameras, etc.). I often wish he were here not only to help me with my computer problems, but to also be able to witness the leaps and bounds technology has taken in the past 10 years that he's been gone. I think he would be astounded with the digital photography that is available today.

My dad used film cameras all his life, but I actually do remember my dad using a digital camera (it must've been 1997 or 1998) and how frustrating it was because you had to hold the camera so still! Anyway, I'm hopeful that I will be able to channel some of my dad's energy as I learn about my new camera!

Blog in hard cover

Several posts back I wrote about reaching my "one year anniversary of blogging" at the end of July. I usually write several posts a week, so I thought it would be nice to print off my blog and make a book. I originally was going to copy and paste all of my blog postings to a Word document and have it printed at Kinko's. I wrote about my plan on my blog, but one of my followers gave me a tip about a website called http://blog2print.com/ where you can type in your blog address, and then all of your posts are automatically uploaded to their website and they will print your blog into a book. If you're a regular follower of my blog, then you know how much I enjoy documenting my life. I thought having my blog printed into a book would be a great way to help document.

This website is really straightforward and easy to use. There were a couple of things that I wished I could've changed (like the font, and I wish I could've deleted/moved pictures), but over all I liked it. My book cost almost $75 because it had 155 pages and I chose to do a hard cover, but in my opinion it was well worth it. (Books start at $14.95 for a 20 page, softcover book, by the way.)

My book arrived last Tuesday and it looks even better then I thought it would! I was a little worried that it might not be worth the money, but it definitey was and I'm glad I did this!

Documenting my life

One of my hobbies is documenting my life. Memories fade as the years go on, so I feel it’s important to make projects that depict what I’ve done, even though my experiences are relatively normal. These are some of the things I’ve done to do this:

Scrapbooks: I started scrapbooking my life when I was a freshman in high school. I made a different scrapbook each year of high school, although, they look pretty amateur by today's scrapbooking standards. After my accident my sister Sharon helped me make a scrapbook about my accident and the first year of my "new life" post-accident. I’ve kept scrapbooking ever since and I’m on my fourth scrapbook since that time.

Photo albums/photo books: I like to keep a current photo album because although I scrapbook a lot of my major activities, there is no way that I can include every picture. (I've since started making photo books via Shutterfly each year instead of keeping a photo album.)

Journals: I kept a personal journal on and off in high school, but I never wrote very religiously. In January 2007 I made a New Year’s resolution to start keeping a personal journal on a Word document. Although I got my laptop in 2005, I didn’t make an effort to keep a journal until 2007 because any time I think about journals, I think about a book written by hand. Since I could no longer write by hand, I was reluctant to start journaling via the computer because it didn't seem like a true "journal." However, I am so glad that I made the resolution to start keeping a journal and that I've kept up with it ever since. I usually write about one to one and a half singlespaced pages a week. I just write about what I’m up to, what my family‘s up to, my thoughts and feelings about things and stuff like that.

Personal history: In 2007 I wrote my personal history, or my life story. I started out the history by using a journal that my mom kept for me when I was a baby. It detailed my first few years of life, my milestones, etc., and then I continued on by writing about each year of my life through 2007 when I wrote my personal history. Each January I write an update to add to my personal history. The updates aren’t that long, and are just a few pages, which describe what has happened in my life and my family’s lives throughout the past year.

Photo books: A couple of years ago I discovered Shutterfly. It’s a great website where you can upload your photos and then make different projects. I love the photo books because it’s a great way to group photos together and have a finished product that beautifully shows what happened during a certain event or in a certain time period. I’ve made several photo books on Shutterfly in the past couple of years including one of my ancestors, one of my immediate family from the 1970's to the present and one of my life. They are so fun to work on and they always turn out so well.

Making these things and keeping these records does take some time, commitment and money, but I think the time and the expense are well worth it. These projects are my prized possessions, and I treasure them above all of my other worldly possessions.

I love the phrase "to know me is to love me." It’s been my experience that when you really know someone and learn about their life you come to love them. I also think the opposite ("to love me is to know me") is true, too. When I love someone, whether it’s a friend or a family member, I want to know everything about them. I think everyone has an interesting life story, even if their life has been "ordinary." I love asking people questions about their lives and their experiences so that I can know them better and develop a love for them. I'm so glad that I have the opportunity and desire to document my life.

Name! Name! Name!

Another of my hesitations in starting a blog was that I had no idea what to name it! I spent a couple days racking my brain for short, "catchy" names, but I couldn't think of anything. Finally, I settled on two: 1) Heather's Life: Tales from the Cripp and 2) Paralized with JOY!. I obviously went with the second.

I want to explain a little bit about the first name I was contemplating. My sister Sharon and her family visited my mom and me for Easter in 2004. I'd recently come back home to live after being in the ICU and rehab hospital for four months. Sharon was helping me make a scrapbook detailing the accident and everything that followed. At one point while we were working I referred to myself as "The Little Cripple That Could." (A reference to the children's book The Little Engine That Could. The engine had a difficult journey ahead of him and he was determined to finish his trip, so he kept telling himself, "I think I can, I think I can!"

Well, I adopted that same mantra after my accident, knowing that I could live as a disabled person if I set my mind to it. So, that was when I started "affectionately" referring to myself as a cripple. Of course the "politically correct" terms for myself and other people in my situation are "disabled" or "handicapped." However, since I am the disabled one, I feel like I can poke fun at myself and call myself a cripple if I want to!

I didn't want people to think my blog title was in poor taste, though, so that's why I decided to go with Paralyzed with JOY! because that really sums up who and what I am. Although I'm disabled, I'm still just as happy, if not happier than I always was.

To blog or not to blog?!

I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog for several months, and I've finally decided to do it. A couple of my sisters and friends have been encouraging me to start a blog, and that is how my initial interest in blogging got started. My two main hesitations have been 1) that blogs are out there for everyone to read, and I'm pretty self-conscious about the way that I write, so the idea that just anyone can read my postings is pretty intimidating!

2) I'm already very busy with various projects. I keep a personal journal that I write in frequently. I decided to start keeping a journal in January 2007 as part of a New Years resolution. I faithfully kept my resolution that year by writing a page or two every week, and I've continued my journal ever since.

Some other projects that keep me busy are that I recently wrote my grandfather's life story. This was a major undertaking and a daunting task, but now that I have finished it, I'm so glad that I decided to do it! It was a very fulfilling project, and it was nice to be able to take advantage of the fact that my grandpa is still alive. After I finished writing the text, I compiled a photo book of my grandpa's life on Shutterfly. It turned out so well and it was a great way to incorporate the pictures I had so as to illustrate his life.

Now that I'm done with that project, I am compiling other photo books of my ancestors, my parents, my immediate family and my life. These books are all in various stages of completion, but I love making these photo books to document my life.

Well, I guess I'm officially committed to this new project/undertaking! I look forward to having my own blog and to recieving comments and feedback from anyone who might read it.