April 2014 – The Lisa Chronicles

We live in a world today where self promotion and interest is instant. If you own a smart phone, an iPad, tablet or any digital device, you can take a picture, and post it instantly. You can “check in” wherever you may be, anywhere in the world. Some say it is too much, some say, it will never be too much. Think about yourself for a minute. You check in at a restaurant, airport or movie, or post a selfie photo in front of somewhere you may be travelling. How quickly are your checking your Facebook profile to see if anyone has ‘liked’ or commented on your update?

Going along with the theme of sharing on social media, there was a concept that took off a couple of years ago called Throwback Thursdays, or TBT. Add a #hashtag in front of it and now you have a trend. Basically it represents a photo from ‘back in the day’ before there were digital photos which gave us the abillity to take the same photo over and over again until it looked good. You took a picture, waiting weeks for it to be developed and hoped that you would get a good photo.

I am an active participant in #TBT photos, and weekly choose photos that I share with my social community. If it revolves around an event, birthday, holiday, friend’s birthday, even better.

A few months ago while I was searching for photos in a box, I came across of photo of myself holding my friend’s infant son. It would have been almost 12 years ago. I have to say I almost didn’t recognize the person staring back at me. Did I really look like that? How did I get to that point? How did I get from that point to the point I am at now? I just know that specific photo will never appear on #TBT or any other social media outlet.

We all know that people who appear in magazines are not what they appear. We know that they are made up, touched up, airbrushed, and all of that to get the “perfect” picture. Even the future king of England, Prince George’s colour was touched up for last week’s US Weekly cover. That does not work in our day to day photo lives. We are who we are, blemishes, flabby arms, rounded stomachs, puffy faces, warts and all.

While putting a photo book which displayed my trips to California I came across a picture of myself taken at Malibu Beach. We had taken a lot of photos that day. Some were posed and then there was this one photo that I felt really portrayed who I am on the inside. I felt it had a place in the book, and I put it on a collage page at the end of the book.

Everyone who looked at the book said it was one of the nicest pictures I had ever taken. I didn’t think it was “THE BEST” photo I had ever taken, but it was probably the most authentic, true self photo of me. I decided to post that photo on Facebook, and the response was more than I could have ever imagined. I captioned it by saying, “Happiness is: A picture that captures your true essence”. I had the most likes (82) and over 20 comments about the photo. I realized that when this first photo was taken, it wasn’t the ‘best’ one that was taken that day. Now I look at the photo and realize it is perfect just the way it is.

I recently travelled to Europe. I didn’t always have someone around to take photos of me at the different locations. Thankfully I have a smart phone and took the opportunity to flip the camera function around and start to take “selfie” photos of myself all over Europe. Not quite the best pictures of myself, but it was a fun way to share my experiences with friends and family at home, with the ability to post the photos when I had access to WiFi.

We all have to learn to love ourselves. I am looking at the photos that were taken of me recently and I see someone who is smiling at the camera. There was a time that I didn’t have a lot of photos taken of myself, and I am happy that time is over. I actually enjoy having my picture taken now.

Live your best life,

Lisa