I know I usually only post Tales from the Scale on a monthly basis, so forgive this one for being somewhat out of the official sequence, as it's coming here on the heels of April (or wait, is it the toes of April and the heels of May?) Either way… I had sort of a come to Baby Jesus meeting with myself over the weekend, and even made a scrapbook page regarding this issue.
(You know if you're making scrapbook pages about it, it's hitting the big time, from a subject standpoint, right?)
The pity party kicked off on friday afternoon, when, while flipping channels, I landed on a rebroadcast of the Season 2 finale of The Biggest Loser. Surprisingly, I'd never seen this show before that moment. I have to pick and choose my reality television carefully, and 9 times out of 10, my vote has to go to either American Idol or Rock of Love Bus. But as I curled up on the couch with a bowlful of Lay's Dill-flavored potato chips and a fresh, sparkling glass of Sprite, I was surprised at just how many times I had to reach for the Kleenex while watching. Pretty powerful stuff, I have to say.
See, my health and fitness journey (oh hell, let's just call it what it is—a bloody diet) isn't going as well as I'd hoped when I began last January. It's mostly because of eating too much and not excercising enough. Yeah, that's pretty much it in a nutshell.
Watching The Biggest Loser, I realized that my casual walks on the treadmill aren't going to do a whole lot to change my physical appearance and that just maybe there needs to be a little more sweat action than I'm getting presently. My muscles haven't ached in years. Something's gotta give.
So, I dug out an old photo from July 2008. I took this photo when Donna has posted her big reveal documenting her weight loss. I took this photo to serve as my "before" shot. Funny this is, eight months later, I weigh 10 pounds more than when I took the blurry shot. I decided it'd be a good motivational contribution to a layout about this issue I have with my body.
And then I made this page:
[materials patterned paper (Scenic Route) + Helvetica and Archer fonts]
One thing I realized in this process, aside from the fact that I need to make some serious decisions about my commitment level to getting into shape, is how much I love the more digital aspects of story-telling. Most of this layout was built in Adobe InDesign, printed out onto photo paper, then combined with a few real world scrapbooking supplies. I don't miss the dimension of elements sticking up on pop dots, or the fact that stuff from my stash just sits unused in my storage bins. I just like that I had an organic inspiration to make a page, and took the digital hybrid approach to complete it.
I know that both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements are really the standards for digi/hybrid scrapbooking, and I'm using and demonstrating PSE to create the album pages in my BigPicture class, but I gotta tell you: I hope one day InDesign catches on. For those of you who own the Adobe Creative Suite, you should play a bit more in it. It's a pretty derned powerful thing.
My point is that I love when a story is hovering in your brain and needs to get out and be told, and in a few quick digital steps, you are able to quickly document and save it.
I'm not sure how losing weight and my love for InDesign combine, but the result is a scrapbook page that documents a slice of my life. And telling your own story, even when it's not fun, cute or sexy, is still a good thing. Know what I'm saying?
Anyway, I'm wondering how many blog readers own InDesign and would be interested in learning more about how to use it for scrapbooking? If you're one of those readers, let me know.
Hey, maybe this wasn't such a woe-filled Tale from the Scale after all! Thanks, scrapbooking and technology! Today is the first day of the rest of my sweat-filled, shapely life!
