I was just reading THIS POST at 2peas, called “Maybe it’s because I’ve never been to a crop …” The poster, Jessica, goes on to state:

But I really don’t see the benefit… if peopl spend weeks getting ready for an all day crop then wouldn’t you have been able to do all those layouts before instead of putting together all these page kits? Is it more for the socializing? I just think that all the time I would spend gettin ready for a crop + the time I would spend at the crop I could get more stuff just doing it at home.

Then many Peas chimed in either to agree with her, or to explain why they do attend crops and retreats. Here is one such answer, from Renee:

The benefit is a big chunk of uninterrupted time to work on projects. No where to go, nothing to do, and no one calling for mom.

Yep, ^^^^THAT^^^^ would be me, LOL. That’s certainly why I go to crops. I don’t get anything done at home. Srsly. I hardly ever scrap at home anymore. And I figured it out.

I’m a People Pleaser.

I *should* be able to sit at my scrap desk, tune out all the distractions, and tell my kids and husband to leave me the heck alone. I should be able to focus, and daze off into Scrappy La La Creative Land.

But I just can’t.

Say I’m sitting at my desk scrapping. I hear one of the kids looking for a permission slip or piece of schoolwork, I jump up and help them. I hear the hubs starting to make dinner or do the dishes, I jump up and help him. My family starts watching a movie together, and I don’t want to miss out so I join them … and make the popcorn, then do the dishes after. When the dryer buzzes, I go fold and put away the laundry, and start another load. And when that dryer buzzes, I do it again. Lather rinse repeat. When the phone rings, even if I’m successful in ignoring it, when DH says it’s for me, I take the call (aren’t I within my rights to say, “Tell them I’m busy and I’ll call them back”? That’s what a sane scrapper would do).

When I’m working from home, I manage to tune everything out, to resist family movies, to let these capable human beings fend for themselves. But for some reason, I can’t seem to do it in defense of my scrapbooking time. I guess the difference is that, when I’m working, I’m People Pleasing my clients (since they ARE paying me, after all, lol).

Maybe it’s because I *do* work so much … that I feel like when I’m home and NOT working, I should be spending every spare moment housekeeping or doing things with my family. So maybe stay-at-home moms don’t stuggle with this, I don’t know. I would love to hear from you SAHM’s … are you able to scrap at home? It seems like most of the popular scrapbook bloggers are SAHMs; I can’t think of any who work full-time (at a non-scrapbooking job, I mean).

Maybe the successful at-home scrappers create when the kids are in bed for the night? Unfortunately, I’m either working again or too tired at that point. Oh how I WISH I could scrap late at night. I used to, when I worked part-time and didn’t have to be up early the next day to put in a full day’s work. Ah, the good old days!

So. I go to crops and retreats. Like someone said in the 2peas thread, I get more pages done at my annual weekend retreat than I do the entire rest of the year. Sad but true.

Coincidentally, that retreat time is almost upon me! I’ll soon be going away for the weekend ~ a Friday through Sunday in March ~ to adjoining condos at a nearby lake, to scrap, scrap, scrap. There will be eight of us and we’ll take turns doing meals, so the only time I’ll be tied up is making dinner on Saturday night. But I hope to pre-flight something and just warm it up at the condos.

Matter of fact, I think I’ll write another blog entry before then about how I pack for a crop. I’ll try to take photos of the process and then explain what I pack and why.

How about you? Do you crop mostly at home or mostly away? Are you a People Pleaser or can you focus and block out all distractions?