Skip to main content

Bored and Brilliant Day 2: No Photos!

Day 2 (no photos) wasn't nearly as much of a challenge.

For me, pictures fall into a kind of dichotomous key:
 - photos of me
   A) for the public (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Vine)
   B) for my friends (Snapchat, SMS)
 - photos of other stuff
   C) for blogging / professionally
   D) fun things!

Photos of me are a strange topic because I hate them. I have an idea about how I look, and then when I have a photo taken, I always think, "That's how I look?" I have always felt uncomfortable about my appearance and it's been a bit liberating to take more photos of myself and to put them out there. I don't need people to tell me how great I look for comment; it's more about saying, "Yes, I do look like that, and that's okay."  Photos that I take for private functions are less of an issue because I'm so busy these days that I don't really have much time for that kind of social activity.

Not taking photos of other things was actually more difficult. I didn't have anything in my day that I felt like I MUST take photos of. I got some new glasses, and I wanted to show them off, but at some point people will probably see them in an actual photo of me that I take in a place while doing a thing.

The biggest challenge was that I got a Phagia freebie at ASHA this year and I decided to try it yesterday, and I wanted to take and post photos of that process so that people could see what it looked like. Because of the challenge, I didn't take photos of that, and I wish that I had.

One of the things that these challenges are teaching me is to be more considerate about how I use my technology. Do I need to take that photo? Am I sharing information or am I just seeking attention? What is the purpose of what I'm doing? What can I be doing that is more valuable instead?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts from last Thursday: Tonight we set up our Indie Bits game, and I'm consumed by nervous anticipation. I imagine this is not unlike when your firstborn child goes to kindergarten. OK, maybe it's not that serious. But the feelings of, please don't bite anyone , and I hope you make friends translates roughly to please don't break while someone is playing you , and also please no one play this game because What if you don't like it?  What if people hate it? What if it doesn't work? What if it's uninteresting? What if the puzzles are too hard? There are so many ways this can go wrong. These are not feelings I typically experience with the things that I make, as I usually make things just for myself. I've always been more of an engineer then an artist. At middle school art camp, I was competent at various techniques, but I never had any great ideas. We would be set free to our own creative devices with a new method, and I sat there, feeling inad...

2011 Reading Challenges

On the first day of this new year, I am pulling together the reading challenges in which I want to participate.  There are so many that sound interesting that I'm not doing, particularly a bunch of them that are regional authors, which I'm trying to cover with my Global Reading Challenge.  I've chosen a bunch of them, but the problem won't be reading quantity, but more like reading strategy.  I read 3 or 4 books a week and most of these challenges allow crossovers, so I see no problems reading enough books, merely reading the right books and then, perhaps more challenging, writing about them, which some challenges require, and some only suggest.  Either way, it's a neat way to prioritize reading for the coming year. The Challenges in Which I Shall Participate Southern Literature Challenge - I've never read enough Southern Lit, and while some of the newer stuff is truly awful, I'd like to explore some older books. It's any book set in the South by a S...

The Land of Lost Things

I met my new therapist last week.  I test drove a few, and she was the one that stuck.  She seems like she's not going to let me get by with any bullshit, and she said a couple of things that zinged me in our very first meeting.  That was unexpected, delightful, and now, with time to think about it, terrifying. I've been doing so much soul searching lately, so much careful consideration of my life and where I am - you'd think I'd be finding myself, but instead I feel so completely lost.  A few reasons: 1. I sabotage relationships in a really predictable way.  I had always thought of this behavior in one way, but with one sentence, this woman last week made me question everything I thought about that.  It's good to question it; it's what I wanted, but to be confronted so quickly by something that I had never considered is frightening.  I've spent so much time trying to figure this stuff out, and it turns out that I've been so completely wrong about ...