Wednesday, December 9, 2009

a quick update

1. I'm back in town, exhausted.

2. Neill didn't win anything at the tournament but had a blast! I took loads of pictures though still don't know when I'd have time to post or scrap them. Speaking of which, I haven't even started scrapping the pictures from our South Africa trip in October yet!?! LOL!

3. Last night I went to DST forum and read some threads there. Got disheartened a little about the expectations people have for designers (seasoned or newbies alike), store owners, CT members, and even fellow scrappers and freebie givers. Any of you ever felt the same?

4. This toothache is killing me. I'll go see the dentist now.

5. There's something to give away here tomorrow, plus an exclusive gift to my first 'followers' as promised. I just have to get un-disheartened first. Haha!!!

5 comments:

Lisa said...

Pont no.3... what do you mean, Pom. I didn't visit DST for the last one week, and don't know the latest news :(

PaMam said...

Glad to hear something from you.

Dont' let the toothache worse than this go see the dentist please.

Neill must have many thing to share with us this week eiei.

I'm not sure about no.3 but wish you not take this point to stop your talent.

See you tomorrow ja.

Pom said...

Hi Lisa and PaMam!!!

My girls, thank you so much for caring enough to ask. I really appreciate it. I thought it over and decided that I'd better clarify it here (rather than putting my answer in a new blog entry and let it potentially become a huge deal because it's gonna be a freebie post as well and a whole lot of people will get to read it! LOL) It should be nice to put it all in one place anyway.

The thing is, I have noticed for a while that scrapbooking blog owners started putting a disclaimer concerning CT obligations on their blogs. (Actually it's yours, Lisa, that peaked my interest first.. hehe) So I wondered if there's a need for me to put one up as well. Since the designers I'm CT for (Rachelle and Dunia) haven't mentioned anything about this yet (understandably -- because they're not American where the regulation is enforced) I think it would be a good idea to check out what people are talking about this issue.

That's why I went to DST forums and put "disclaimer" in their little search box. The search results really blew me away. :)

{ Now, I must state first that English is not my mother tongue and I'll try my best to explain my thoughts. I hope it doesn't offend anybody and I'm sorry if by any chance it does, okay? :) }

In short, I think generally the community feels indifferent towards the issue, meaning if we have to put it in the blog, fine. It's not gonna change the way we scrap anyway. Some however think that it's none of the government's business. (Don't they have more important things to deal with? LOL)

But the discussion turned quickly into a rather heated argument whether this implys that CT members' layouts are inferior or done with less genuine scrapping intentions, especially those created with stock photos. There were some sensitive words such as "sponsored", "endorsements", "advertisements", etc. thrown into it and that made quite a few people uncomfortable.

Personally I don't think much of the issue (or other issues for that matter, hehe) but how the discussion went put me off a little. As I said, if you search with "disclaimer" as your keyword, it's like you open Pandora's box. (Now everyone is gonna go make the same search. I know it!!! LOL!!) Almost all the threads that came up were long and headache-inducing as there were a lot of emotions involved. I stayed away from politics threads but the scrapbooking-related ones were not actually much less heated either.

I can't help thinking how nice it would be if we can all readily accept that everyone is entitled to an opinion that might not resemble our own, and agree to disagree. Anyway, for me, reading the threads is eye-opening, no less. I learned a lot from the forums regarding what to do and what not to do in this business, though I also learned to avoid making mistakes at all costs since people might not be so forgiving.

Please understand that in saying these I'm not referring to any thread or any incident or any forum member(s) in particular at all. It's just a general feeling that I had at that time. Yes I was down for a while (more from all the driving that day, I guess), but now I've recovered! :) I remind myself to always have fun scrapping. And when I feel like it, I'll try my best to make a little something for sharing here, all the while crossing my fingers and hoping that people will find it up to their standards. At the same time, I'll try not to worry too much about responses. After all this place is supposed to be my "breathing room" and I intend to keep it that way for as long as possible.

That shouldn't be too hard isn't it? :)

PaMam said...

I read your reply as my routine homework for today. I also learned a lot from this issue.

Thank you for visiting us today naja.

Lisa said...

Oh wow...
That's complicated! I put my disclaimer simply just because the designer I work for asked me to do that, and I don't have any problem with that, LOL

I guess I don't want to put "disclaimer" as keyword in search box. I want to keep scrapping as a fun thing to do.. LOLO