Disclaimer/Warning
This post is very much a ramble of my own musings, and a lot of them are about me. I feel very conflicted about writing about or talking about myself, especially when I’m going to be laying bare truths (or things I hold to be true) about myself that I don’t particularly like.
Not that hard. Take a selfie, every day, posting them to Instagram. That’s what I set out to do at the start of this year. The reactions have been interesting. I’ve had some people who were long-time followers that I didn’t know very well unfollow me. I’ve had new people I’ve met follow me and unfollow immediately. I’ve also had a lot of really positive support from people, which has been great.
I’m knocking it on the head after January – and here’s why.
What’s been more interesting is my own response to those reactions. The fact that people were unfollowing me made me question whether I should continue (I can totally understand why they did – my Instagram feed was mostly me). In fact, the original version of this post was me saying I was going to stop after January, as you can see above.
It throws up a whole bunch of questions and reactions from me that I need to think about some more. The initial thought was “selfie a day, that can’t be hard, and maybe it’ll help with this and that”. I didn’t really think about people’s reactions to it. I hoped they would be positive, and maybe with the full story of why I’m doing it their reactions would be different (as opposed to just taking a selfie a day because I am obsessed with my own face – narcissism is not a trait I find in any way appealing).
But is dwelling so much on what other people think really helpful? In any way? Or is it just another part of what I’m trying to deal with here, which is how I feel about myself. There are other implications of my reaction as well – this desire to please other people (either by acceding to their wishes or attempting to anticipate them in advance, regardless of how solid that assumption is). To please other people at the expense of my own intentions. I don’t think that’s healthy.
Well, I know that’s not healthy.
One of the reasons for setting out to do this was to get better at being in front of a camera. I don’t like having pictures taken of me. I always run and hide when someone starts pointing their phone at a group, or when someone gets out a camera. I’d like to be more comfortable with it. I do feel a little more comfortable with it already. In some ways, having the reason of ‘I said I would’ to take a selfie is motivation enough to take the snap (and I feel bad when I miss one, which I have done in January already – twice).
But it’s not really about photos. It’s about accepting the way I look, and being comfortable in my own skin. It’s about having a confident image of myself. About removing that voice inside that’s a hangover from my school days (many many years ago). I’ve not cracked that yet – there’s a lot to change, and a lot of road to travel – but the selife-for-a-year experiment is an interesting way of getting started.
It’s tough to write about this stuff. There’s a reason this is going up here, and not on my main blog. Admitting that you aren’t that confident in yourself, and that you find hard certain things that other people find easy is very uncomfortable territory for me. Admitting any kind of weakness is uncomfortable territory for me! But I do believe that change comes from within, and I think admitting to yourself there’s stuff you need to work on is the best way to get started.
One thing I have learned is that a project like this works best when you’re doing something rather more dramatic with your day than I am – like this, for example.
