Project Life Creative Team Video

Subtitle: My 30+ Seconds of Sheer Embarrassment

So, here’s what happened. Those of us on Becky Higgins’ 2013 Project Life Creative Team were each asked to make a short video in honor of National Scrapbooking Day, which is on Saturday, May 4th, this year. All we had to do was to introduce ourselves and share a tip or idea or favorite PL page.

Piece of cake, right? Not if you have video phobia. Here’s my problem: I might have a bit of a Southern drawl (so people say; I don’t agree), and thanks to my mother who was from the North I tend to talk very fast. So, I try to talk slowly and as if I don’t have an accent. This causes me to stutter and lose my train of thought. Okay, my train of thought has been missing a few cars for several years now. Making this video was really hard, folks! 

If you’d like to see the composite of our group’s videos, click on the photo of my good friend Petra below. She’s from Australia. She has the cutest accent. 

Project Life is huge!! It’s truly spreading all over the world. Did you notice we have team members not only in the United States, but also in Canada, Singapore, Great Britain, Australia, and Brazil. (I might be missing a country or two.) The physical Project Life products will be going out to retail stores all over the world starting this month. 

I did not let the embarrassment of that video keep me from going out in public. No sirree. [Southern expression] I might have modified my appearance a bit, though. See:

Haha! I had eye surgery on the morning the team video came out. Bye bye, cataracts in my right eye! Hello, new multi-focal lens! I was so sleepy after the surgery. I couldn't stay awake. I made myself come to the office to read email and check Google Reader. That's when I saw our video had been posted. That woke me up!

In case I didn’t embarrass myself enough by directing you to the group video, which includes me, I decided to show some outtakes. But, alas! I can't get the video clips I strung together to post. If I ever get them to work, I'll try again. In the  meantime, here's a word description of my videoing nightmare experience. 

I chose Peter as my photographer, because the rest of the “people” at home at the time didn’t have prehensile thumbs to use my iPhone camera. I chose to film outside, thinking the light would be better than indoors, and it was . . . except for the parts where I turned purple. (What was that about??) Also, it seemed a fog rolled in a few times.

In the short time hours we sat on our “quiet” deck trying to get the &#*$% video done, dogs barked (repeatedly), planes flew overhead (repeatedly), our street turned into a major thoroughfare filled with large, noisy trucks and kids drag racing, the guy next door turned on his industrial-strength leaf blower, the workers in the yard behind ours yelled at the top of their lungs and had loud sneezing attacks, . . ..

But noise wasn’t the main problem. I was the problem. I kept forgetting what I was going to say. When I tried to say, “Happy National Scrapbooking Day,” it often came out as “Happy Thanksgiving!” That was a natural error, of course. When I think "happy," I think food! At least I caught myself before I said “Happy Birthday,” but I got stuck on Thanksgiving, for sure.

Here’s the really bad part. I couldn’t get the beginning of the video right. Yes, that’s the part where I said my name and city. I couldn’t do it! When a camera is in your face it’s harder to remember your name and city than you might think! 

More than once I said I lived in Germantown, Tennessee. I did, but that was TWELVE YEARS ago!! Good grief.

I leave you with good wishes for National Scrapbooking Day or Thanksgiving or whatever holiday you choose to celebrate next. But, PLEASE, don’t ask me to make a video for it.