The Artist Way. Week Two Check-In. Tale Of The Self Conscious Selfie.

"Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously." - Tom Robbins

Tale Of The Self Conscious Selfie.

Blogging has had me face some preconceived notions that I have held for long that I had forgotten when and how I received them in the first place. One that was particularly strong and deeply rooted was my distain for selfies.

I believe it evolved and grew from my annoyance with people getting in your way in a truly beautiful moment, a sunset or vista to TURN AROUND, away from the magical gift of then to take a picture of themselves there for proof they were there, when that moment had passed. No one seemed to be present anymore, always on cell phones or taking selfies when they do look around. By through blogging I get to be reintroduced to the selfie, get acquainted with it as a story telling tool.

But still I have allowed my preconceived notion take hold of me. All those years of having annoyance and judgement towards the selfie taker around me has done a 180 and came back to crush me. I am so awkward trying to take them, feel stupid and just refuse to do it around people at all.

Freedom and the ability to express free choice and creativity means not making choices because of reactions but choices because of conscious thought and really looking at the options and beauty in front of you. If I was to hold this judgement I would hinder my ability to make better choices and be creative in my storytelling. So selfies I took, and will continue to take here and there until I am conformable with the action. Quite a few people at steemfest helped me get over the fear of taking selfies. That is where this shift really began.

Here are the selfies that I have taken from steemfest until now. I am showing them because the old me would be horrified by be telling people that I take selfies let alone show them. Horrified that my ego is taking random glam shots...

All the while my ego is controlling me all sneaky like....... oh humanity! I need to stop taking everything so seriously. This is to state my freedom from my preconceived judgement.

This weeks journey on The Artist Way.

Morning Pages.

I have been avoiding the morning pages this week. Last week I was able to really get deep into myself in the morning pages, it brought up some stuff mid week and everything got all mushy and messy. It needed to happen, but this week I have very cleverly avoided myself in the morning pages by never letting myself do them. I have kept myself very busy. I have called myself out as an avoider this check in. DO YOUR MORNING PAGES!

Artist Date.

I had been putting off the Artist Date so I could do something exciting and ended up just not making time for myself at all. So this morning I grabbed the camera, made some matcha to go, and went for a walk in a quite part of the neighborhood to hang out with some trees. It was cold out and very quite. The sun is in a low arc so just small parts of sunlight sprinkled through the thick canopy layer. The creek twinkled out like a bell. It was nice to just wander and be quite. Here are some shots.

Picture taken this morning on Artist Date.

Tasks

I enjoyed the tasks this week. It gave me a nice clean look into my everyday activities. I made time to bird watch for 20min after I spilled some seed feeding my quail. Something I love to do but haven't made time for. I saw Scrub Jays, California Towhees, and Dark-Eyed Juncos.

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Big Love

Ren