I culled images of myself from my 2021 image library.

I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to say about them.

They have sat in a folder on my desktop since.

Recently, an image that someone else took of me showed up in my memory feed. 

I finally felt like perhaps it was time to write this post.

My friend was going to a nursery and asked me to come along. On the way home I asked her to stop so I could capture this wonderful bit of yellow. She snapped this image of me and I absolutely love it. ( thank you Nancy )

I can't say this about most images taken of me. I usually don't like them. 

Another friend took an image of me on a day trip right before I left IL in 2015. It's another capture that I love of myself. ( thank you Ricky) 

What I love about them is that they are of me in my element. I am unaware that I am being photographed. Which is perhaps what makes me love them. organic and unfussy

Selfies are different. I might look in the mirror and not particularly care for what I see. I would say at this particular juncture of my life I feel pretty uncomfortable in my own skin. I know that there is an accept and love yourself movement out there but it's not happening for me. My confidence of self is pretty low. 

What the camera sees seems to be different. I could go a long while and not take images of me but now I am glad I have them, I am glad that I took the moments to photograph myself. 

Lately I've been taking a year and giving it a description. Like the year I turned 5. That was when my family moved from Canada to the US. Within that move we lived in 3 different places. I have a lot of memories from that year. My earliest memory was when my youngest sister was born. I was 3, and we all got the measles. This memory is very vivid. Some of these memories only recently found me. They were repressed. I have a long list of missing details in my life, mostly because my parents never filled in the blanks or falls into the category of the things we don't say. details unsaid. I am beginning to write down what I recall

In relationship to things 2021 one of my health issues included the disease Rosacea. There is little known about why this skin condition is what it is. It has a variety of forms in which it presents itself and mine was the icky large postule sort. When I had a an outbreak I felt like a leper. The nickel size undergrounders were very very painful. It took most of the year to get to the other side of them. A patient esthetician, a new gentle skin regimen and topical medications turned it around. I took images of when it was really bad but I can't bring myself to share those. I felt grateful for masks in 2021

It was additionally the second Covid year. In 2021 I left the house about twice a month. I stacked my days out and made multiple errands on one day. According to my records I left my home 36 times in 2021. When you put a number to it. It's sortof a dose of reality.

My laptop died in 2020. 2021 is the first full year of images in my new laptops photo library. I could go back into the archive I created for prior years of selfies but it's really a pain.

So, beginning with things 2021 - this is what I have to work with.

Perhaps annually I will see what the year of self offered me. 

Lots of images in 2021 are of my hair. I had decided to let it grow, but I didn't realize how horribly unhealthy it was. Sure it was getting long but when looking back and seeing this first image I realized that I needed to start taking better care of my silver threads. In the mirror with just my eyes I did not see how terrible it had gotten. I just saw long. Many regular and healthy trims plus a shift in hair care products helped me regain better health for my hair. This took time.

covid hairstyles. too funny

during menopause my eyelashes disappeared. sigh. the meds I am now on for glaucoma make the lashes grow. one eye has more lashes than the other. never would have seen that with just my own eyes.

I had a temperature of 102 after my second booster shot

Over the years I have taken many shadow images like these.

I like this self capture.