Project 365? What a load of ...

I hate, loathe, detest and despise Project 365/52/12. For the uninitiated, Project 365 is the thing where you take a photo every day of the year, no matter how boring this will be for the poor soul expected to look at it, and put it in a daily/weekly/whatever scrapbook page/album. For Project 52 you take photos once a week, and so on.

 Did I mention I hate this sort of thing? Here's why:  

It's Marketing

It's designed to get you to spend money on more kits once you've finished buying all the Christmas and Winter stuff you don't need. There's a brief flurry of "New Start/New You/Resolutions" junk every January but that runs out of steam. Incidentally, I hate that stuff too. It says to scrapbookers, "You and/or your life is a big failure. What are you going to do about it?" How rude.

It's too soon for most stores to start selling Valentines junk. I'm not keen on that either. In the UK you send cards to your romantic other, not to your children and friends - which would be considered a bit weird - and hubby and I gave that up long ago.

So what are they going to sell? Ooh, I know, a whole book of stuff designed for a year (and therefore expensive...). Templates for putting seven photos on a page, like you couldn't work that out for yourself. A whole load of little bits that say "Monday, Tuesday ... January ... February. Puhleeeze!! Are we five years old?? 

It's Manipulative

Last year the biggest B word-y scrapbooker on the planet started a Facebook group for Project Whatever peeps. The woman is a control freak and lost no time in pushing people around and - big surprise - flogging her friend's "here are your bits of Wednesdays in case you can't spell it" kit. It was supposed to be "supportive". Ha! It was a vehicle for the playground bully. I was the first one out of the door. I will not be amused if anyone adds me to any of these groups this year. I much preferred it when you invited friends to Facebook groups rather than added them against their will.

So you've failed already at the "create a new you" stage on January 1st. Now you're going to fail to take photos every day, fail to put them in a layout, fail to impress your new buddies unless you use the right bits of kit and then you're going to fail to do all the other important things you should be doing while you're wasting time pratting around with this silly project. Which leads me to ....

It's horribly smug

The "I married my best friend and we have 10 kids" brigade love Project 365. They can flaunt their family, big house and SAHM lifestyle every day to those who have to work three jobs, those who have nothing, those who have lost someone. Vile.

It's a colossal waste of time

Life is too short to be taking photos because someone says you have to. Yes, that might be fun for one challenge project. It's always good to leave your comfort zone for a while to see what you can create. But every day? Every week? Surely you have better things to do. I know plenty of people who haven't backed up their computers in months, haven't unzipped hundreds of kits, haven't written in their blogs etc etc to say nothing of real life constraints on their time. Scrapbooking is a hobby meant to be enjoyed, it shouldn't turn into a job you have to do. That destroys creativity.

Be brave. Say "No, I'm not doing that!" There will be albums on Digi Scrapping Tips for those who would like to show use their Project 365 pages and we have daily and weekly challenges for those who would inspiration without doing it. No selling you anything!

There's a poll on this topic on Digi Scrapping Tips. Come along and give your views (or comments are welcome here). There would be a witty layout to go with this post but - hello - I'm busy doing more important stuff.