Stories of all sizes

Does the New Forest count as travel? We had to go on a ferry, so I think it does. We've had quite heavy frosts here the last couple of days, and autumn seems like so long ago.

I have SO MANY pictures that I want to work with at the moment. Hundreds. Quite possibly thousands. They are all carefully stored in neatly labelled folders in date order, and it's not the amount of them that makes me feel overwhelmed. Rather, it's the act of prioritising - how do I decide which story to tell next? From a memory-keeping point of view there are some stories that are surely more important than others, but sometimes telling those big stories seems so daunting. Sometimes, I am inspired by particular photographs, a product or an artistic style...but it almost feels wrong to do that instead of focusing on something more significant. 

If I only have a limited time to scrapbook (and work does get in the way) then how do I make sure that the pages that are in there are the ones with the stories I really want to tell? And I suppose there are two parts to the answer. Firstly - I read my albums. Occasionally I sit down and flick through the album from a particular year and realise that I have missed out an event/person/occasion that was very important. The first time I did that I realised I rarely scrapbook birthdays, and because Christmas is a separate album then most years' albums ended in November. I am making an effort to correct that as I feel inclined. I did a bunch of Christmas pages earlier this year and it totally killed my enthusiasm for the season, so now I just do little bits here and there.

And secondly - I don't worry about it. I scrapbook whatever inspires me at the time. Whether it's the story, or the photos, or it matches perfectly with a new piece of paper. Sometimes something that seems significant might be a page that in a few years' time I will throw away. And other times I won't realise the significance until months or years later. The most important thing to me is that a page in my album is better than a memory in my head.