recently, as i was wandering the halls of the internet, i came across this post by jakob lodwick. i felt the need to comment.
over the last ten plus years of journalling online, and posting self portraits for most of those ten years, i have had a lot of people make vicious commentary about my character based on what they perceive to be my uncontrollable vanity. i let those comments cut me for a long time, but i refused to stop using the medium to chronicle my life as i saw fit. it was never to garner compliments, or to fool others into thinking i was beautiful. it has always been a form of self examination that was, in its own way, theraputic. i have certainly edited photos to make them better, not to say i haven’t. but it was more for me than for other people. it was what i wanted to remember.
what i have learned recently, upon looking back at these years of exploration, is that i enjoy seeing the transformations that have made themselves apparent in these simple photographs. the way i turned from wide-eyed kid to young adult, from young adult to mother, from mother to wisened grown-up. i like to flip back through file after file of growth, and remember where i was, and how it relates to where i am now.
the thing is, in ten years no one is going to care about whether or not you posted these pictures. the compliments attached to them will fade from memory, the medium in which they were shared will have been obliterated by some new emerging technology. in ten years, you are the only one who will be looking back, the only one who cares what words you wrote or pictures you took. and when i’m looking back over these bygone days, i don’t really want to think that i ever censored myself because some idiot on the internet thought i was vain. i don’t want to miss out on part of my own experience because of someone else’s opinion.
