#reverb10 - December 25th

Prompt: Photo - a present to yourself. Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. Share the image, who shot it, where, and what it best reveals about you.

This photo was shot by my sister-in-law in the US this summer, when I was visiting my brother, his wife and their daughter.

I love to be a kid and have passion to just show up in the moment and be silly and have fun.  Unfortunately, my nature is to worry constantly about the rules and whether or not I'm following them.  This tends to mean that a part of me is always worrying about being 'sensible' (i.e. boring and reserved) and not getting too crazy.  What I love about hanging out with my niece is that I can just act how my inner child wants to act and have fun doing the things I loved to do when I was young.  The only deterrent to this is when an adult shows up.

Although I was having fun reading my niece her story (with all the different voices I could create), as soon as my sister-in-law came along to take the photo of us, I hid behind my niece for fear of not 'acting' right.  I became completely self-conscious.  Being self-conscious is something I've known about myself for a long time, and I now realize that for a long while it has prevented me from enjoying life to the fullest.  I hold back way to often when I should step forward and live carefree, no matter that someone could judge me for it.

Now I understand myself better I'm going to strive not to worry so much how others see me next year.  However, in order to do that I have to accept myself - perfections and imperfections - or others won't accept me either.  This will be no easy task, I'm sure. But I'm willing to try.  

In 2011 I'm going to be striving to have more fun and enjoy life in a more child-like way.  I hope this will enable me to enjoy life more and also find more passion in my life.  I no longer want to 'untag' myself from life for fear of what others may think (I find it interesting how many people untag themselves from pictures online because they don't think they look 'good' enough).  It's not that I want to look bad to others (or think others should accept horrible pictures of themselves that their friends have posted online), but simply that at some point we have to stop worrying about looking 'good', or before we know it all the time we had left that we used to try and look 'better' will be over and what will we really have achieved?

And on that note - I'm off to play the Super Hoola-Hoop challenge on Wii :D

A snapshot of life to come in 2011 - letting go and living at an Amusement park!