How did your day go?

“How did your day go?”

So asks the little email I get every evening as I am settling down for bed. Do you use Oh Life? I have found this service awesome for keeping track of everyday occurrences (although it took me weeks to quit singing “Losing My Religion” by REM every time I got one of the emails, or even thought about the service.) For some reason, of all the formats I’ve ever tried for keeping a running journal, this has been the easiest. I see that email every evening, & think, “Aw man. Okay I’ll just write down a few sentences,” and then I’m off. Sometimes I literally do just type one sentence, sometimes, often when I thought I’d skip it altogether, I end up typing paragraphs. Recently, they announced a premium service, so now I can customize my email. This has been really awesome because I ask myself a few key questions which help me to record what’s important, even when I’m stuck.

And my oh my, during May I have been STUCK!

These are the questions I ask myself each day:

What are you thinking about right now? What took up most of the day? What did the kids say or do today that is worth remembering? Creative pursuits? Work or school? Lastly, are you dreading anything?

So why am I going over my Oh Life routine? You might think I am about to write about layouts inspired by Oh Life, or by keeping a regular journal. Nope. I have to tell you a little secret. I signed up to write this blog post~ Geesh, weeks ago. And I never came up with a topic. Never asked the CT and the designers to help me collect images for it, I just downright neglected it. I thought about it, oh I thought & thought about it. Most every day I’d think, “Wow I should really put some thought to what I am going to write about at the end of the month!” And then I’d go back to whatever I was doing at the time. Whoops. I’ve been stuck in a mojo-less rut all month, finding it incredibly difficult to think about anything, much less CREATE anything. I know I’m not alone. May seems to be a crazy month for a lot of people. School is winding down, Summer plans being made, and, I don’t know, we’re all just kind of frazzled & ready for Summer to begin in earnest. Ready for something else to happen.

As this day progressed, I thought, “What if I just go step by step through how I create a layout when I really have no mojo?” And step one is asking myself the kind of basic questions I have Oh Life ask me every day. So here we go:

Q: What are you thinking about right now?
A: Um, DUH. Writing a blog post.

Q: What took up most of the day?
A: Well, we went swimming!

Q: What did the kids do or say today that is worth remembering?
A: At the pool, Genny kept saying, “This is the life!”

Okay, stop right there. Look what we have, we’ve got a layout in the making! I took some pictures at the pool, so why not make a layout titled “This is the life?”

And BAM! Now I’m inspired! As I opened up the blog today, I found that there’s a great freebie template by the incredibly talented Stephanie Dagan, so I snagged that. Templates are awesome when you have mojo challenges! Now I’m going to take that template & my new inspiration to the shop & see what I can find.

Awww, Yeah! Check this out! Is this perfect, or what??

And this is what I came up with:

Not too shabby, eh? See, so if yo ask yourself the right questions, add a template & some great products, you really can come up with something from practically nothing.

And now, you know that last question? Where I ask myself if I am dreading anything? Now the answer is no.