Here Goes Nothing

I’ve been wanting to do a self-portrait project for a while. I’m thinking that I’ll start with one every day for a week (Charity’s self-portrait week a couple of months ago is probably what got me started thinking about self-portraits in the first place), and after that we’ll see. Maybe I’ll be done, or I’ll maybe I’ll decide to do something like one a week for a year.

I have as many reasons for wanting to do this as I do for wanting to skip it, but I’m not even going to try to articulate them all in one post here at the beginning. Instead, I’ll process as I go along, which is pretty much how I roll anyway.

So my plan is to start Monday “for real,” but here is a freebie to get things started:

I actually uploaded this one to my Flickr account a few months ago. I titled it “Dorky self-portrait.” Yep, it sure is, but that’s beside the point—or maybe it really is the point. I really want to get over my own dislike of being photographed because that dislike is at odds with the fact that I really do enjoy my life right now.

What’s more, I want my kids to have a record of what I look(ed) like now, when they’re too young to remember on their own. I don’t want them to see their mother as someone who always had her hand over her face when someone tried to photograph her, or someone who wanted every picture of her deleted because she thought she looked too fat or too old or whatever other critical thought I have about so many pictures of myself. Someday I want my boys to see, via actual photographic evidence, how much fun I had being their mom when they were little.