Truth in Scrapbooking

I had been slightly reluctant to get into scrapbooking, because it seems like the type of thing that people who are perky and have clean cars and perfect blond children and teacher-handwriting do. And, as I have gone deeper into this craft-craze, I have found that to be pretty much the case. "Cutesy" is a word that can easily describe lots and lots of the materials that one finds in the scrapbooking sections of craft stores.

But, upon finding myself the owner of a blank scrapbook, cutting tools, and years' worth of pretty good pictures of me and my friends, my friends mostly, and having the disposition that I do - namely, a journaler, a documenter - I want to tackle this project.

So I think I will attempt to bridge this gap of cutesy-ness and reality.

Picture pretty backgrounds and neat borders and smiling white teenage girls, with captions like "Mickey and Becky immediately before Becky barfed vodka on Sarah's living room carpet," or "Jay, before he cheated on Melissa with her twin sister." Die cuts of water bongs and condoms.

This seems like a step in the right direction, yes? Provided this direction is reality. However, I'm not as enthusiastic about this as I am about other incongruous projects I've embarked on before, like the tongue-in-cheek wedding invitations, or the culture-busting notebook covers. Because does every goddamn thing have to be sarcastic? Is there nothing that this world has to offer that I don't feel compelled to mock?

I want, I need, to revolt against the shrink-wrapped bubble-lettered earnestness that scrapbooking embodies. As some recent advice I've received about feeling "sad" and "down" has centered around changing my brain chemistry rather than the world around me, when I really don't think there's anything wrong with my brain chemistry, I'm disturbed by any impulses to just give in. Still, what exactly would I be giving in to if I just scrapbooked like our relationships and lives were perfect and happy, and easily fitted into die-cuts of birthday cakes and bubble-lettered accounts of when Jeremy just did the cutest thing?

Perhaps it is important to revolt without the purpose of the book being the revolt itself, but the arrangement of memories and photographs.