October 3, 2022 Subverted Selfie Project Post (Be Your Own Beloved Edition)

DAY 03: EMERGING INTO THE IMAGE

HOW HAS IT BEEN EMERGING INTO THIS EXPERIENCE?

Today's prompt is all about emerging into the process and our photo using one of my favourite creative ways to take a photo. It's a great one to help us emerge a bit more into the photo and this experience. How has it been emerging into the experience as a whole far?

From October 3, 2022: Tonight, I lit several #candles in my bathroom before I dimmed the lights and drew a #hot #bath and let my #naked #body sink into it. I lay in the stillness of the green foamy water around me. My face, along with a bit of my @Vicks_US #Vaporub covered chest, as well as my knees being the only parts of me that weren’t submerged. The hum of the bathroom’s #dehumidifier #fan was muffled by the water that my ears were surrounded by. Being under the water, even the sound of my #breath was amplified by the water in the tub. The smell of bath salts mixed with the vaporub and soothed incessant coughing that’s plagued me over the past few days. The only thing that kept me awake was the holding of my iPhone in my left hand. At first, I used it to shoot this photo, before finding some soothing meditation music on YouTube that I put on before putting my phone down on part of the ledge that formed the rim of the tub I was in.

I USED THE WORD 'EMERGING' BECAUSE I THINK IT'S IMPORTANT TO LET OURSELVES EASE INTO THE PROCESS. WHAT ARE THE COMFORT ZONES YOU'RE NOTICING SO FAR?

Are you noticing that some prompts are more outside your comfort zones than others? If you find yourself coming up against a comfort zone, could you let yourself use a tool like this and emerge into the photo gently rather than push yourself and make it all or nothing? Can you think of any other times you let yourself stretch into an experience, step by step and let yourself emerge gently?

It’s difficult when you’re sick to remember to take these photos, let alone think deeply and write reflections about them. Often, I simply snapped the photos, and then wrote about them later - which I’m doing right now, on October 11, for a photo I shot ob October 3. It feels like I’m falling into that old trap of starting something and not finishing it. But what can you finish on days when you’re barely awake, fighting a headache with a fever, congestion, an upset stomach and horrible diarrhea? Hardly anything. So, to be honest, just shooting the photos was enough for me.

276/365.

#beyourownbeloved💖 #depressionhelp #depressionawareness #startingover #selflove #selflovejourney #selflove #dailyselfie #dailywriting #subvertedselfies #subvertedselfie #art #photography #sad #depressed

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Today’s photo prompt and reflective journaling questions for today was a part of the BE YOUR OWN BELOVED photo workshop challenge which is run several times throughout the year by photographer VIVIENNE McMASTER. It’s well worth signing up for, and doing alongside other participants. Note that there’s no requirement to share your photos outside of the group. You don’t even have to share the writing reflections with the group, let alone publicly as I do. It’s a very supportive and private safe space that McMaster provides.

@beyouroewnbeloved @beyourownbelovedportraits