Juli Asks — Advice about Ali Edwards’ Week in the Life Project

Welcome to Juli Asks, a series where Juli, one of our Awesome Ladies members, who’s just getting into scrapbooking, asks rukristin for advice. Learn from this series and ask questions of your own.

Juli: With a project like Ali Edwards’ Week in the Life, what do you see as the pros/cons of doing it during the week that Ali picks vs. just doing it any random week of the year? I see value in having a community of people to go through it with, but I also worry about getting caught up in comparisonitis. 

rukristin: With a project like Ali Edwards’ Week in the Life, what do you see as the pros/cons of doing it during the week that Ali picks vs. just doing it any random week of the year? I see value in having a community of people to go through it with, but I also worry about getting caught up in comparisonitis. 

I love this question, and I think that this is an answer, more than some of our others, that is going to come down to personal preferences, habits, and practices. There’s a lot more to it than just the community of people to play along with. My best advice when it comes to a project like this, and really any project, is to figure out what you want from the project itself before you start.

Jot down some notes. Ask yourself — what about this project interests me, what stories do I want to tell, what supplies do I want to use, why do I want to participate. 
Odds are, you’re not going to say — so I can get caught up in the social media craze! And honestly, unless you’re the kind of person who works on a project every single night when she gets home AND shares to Instagram, DON’T let a project like this change that. 

Make when you make. Share when you share. 

That being said. Let’s get back to the question and decide whether you should do it this week, or a different week, and let’s break down the answers by making actual PRO and CON lists for each choice. 

Choice: Doing it the week Ali Edwards Chooses for Week in the Life

PRO

• You don’t have to choose when to do the project. No decision fatigue for you. You’re already going to be making a bunch of decisions regarding the project, this isn’t one of them.
• Ali’s coordinated supplies (physical) have the best chance of being in stock. 
• There is a bounty of inspiration surrounding Ali’s Week in the Life project. Not only from her, through her preceding blog posts and social media content, but from people participating during the project as well. 
• Working on it when other people are also working on it can be an awesome motivator to work on and complete this project in a timely manner. 
• This is a project about a deep dive into one week of your current life. It’s not about anyone else (unless they are involved in this one week of your current life). You don’t have to make it about anyone else but you. You can keep it as simple as you want it to. By using Ali’s parameters, you’re keeping it as simple as possible. 
• Even if you are not able to finish it/complete then you can always choose to do it a different week. 

CON

• You have no say over when WitL is. It could fall on a week that doesn’t work/is inconvenient  for you. You can do it a week later, a month later or three/six months later. It doesn’t matter. 
• You might be the type of person who is overwhelmed by a ton of content, or a million people participating in the event at the same time as you. (If this is the case, you can always choose not to share on social media, or not to follow people participating or hashtags on social media).
• You might not be able to finish it/complete it and then you feel bad about it (do not feel bad — just schedule it for another week, or create with what you’ve got and journal in how hard your week was, depending on how much you’ve got — I’ve literally done both). 

Choice: Choosing your own week

PRO

• You get to schedule the project for whatever week you think will work best for you. You can decide if you want a week filled with all the normal stuff, a week with some weird stuff, or a week in between. 
• You can share it on social media and not be concerned how it’s stacking up against everyone else’s project (although your story can never possibly compare to anyone else’s story — it can be hard to get those thoughts out of our head sometimes). 
• This is a project about a deep dive into one week of your current life. You get to make it work for you in whatever way you need to. Whether that’s products, format, or time. You are the decision maker. 

CON

• It can be lonely out there, doing a week long project by yourself. Especially when it’s a project created by someone else. 
• If you are not self-motivated, it can be harder to fit a full-size, week-long project into your schedule when there isn’t anyone else playing along. 
• If you want the Ali Edwards physical products. If you don’t order them when everyone else is buying them, they are less likely to be available. 
• Choosing to do it a different week, for some people, can be a form of procrastination. It is easy to say you’ll do it next week, or next month, and then it’ll be 2020 and you’ll have gone a full year without documenting a Week in the Life. 

I hope I’ve given you a couple of things to think about. If you’ve got any questions, please let me know. I’m more than happy to chat more about this project with you! 

Thanks so much for reading Juli Asks, a series where Juli, one of our Awesome Ladies members, who’s just getting into scrapbooking, asks rukristin for advice. Learn from this series and ask questions of your own.