DAY 3: 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?

March 3, 2022: Cleaning up and organizing my place and my Mom’s has been overwhelming at times. A large part of the mess that surrounds me has been fed by my addiction to over-spending, often beyond my means. It’s something I know I need to work on more seriously. It’s not that I can’t be responsible with my spending: when I was younger I was very obsessive with tracking every cent: I kept track of my receipts and spending in an excel workbook, and made sure I balanced out each month. I’d put a percentage of my each paycheque into a savings account, one that was locked down tight so the only way I could move money from it was to actually phone my bank and had it transferred out of the account. I was also Director of Finance at my university’s student union, where I assisted in overseeing a forensic audit conducted by PWC.

But since my depression settled in deeply over the last few years, I found myself digging myself in deeper and deeper with the spending. It’s just been so easy to do when you’re lying in bed, wanting to erase my troubles, my sorrows. Other people drink and do drugs. I eat way too much junk food, and spend like a drunken sailor. It’s caused

So today I emerge from the myst, finishing a deep clean of my Mother’s living room.

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?

I’m finding more and more, that the comfort zones in this project and in my life have been to stick to the routines I’ve become accustomed to. That feel safe. Eating a bag of Reese’s and a large popcorn feels safe. Buying another stuffed animal I don’t really have space for feels safe. Cleaning feels scary because it’s a path to something in life I don’t remember. But it feels more freeing than being stuck where I have been up to this point. I want to say I’ve experienced something like this before, but I haven’t.

62/365.

This was originally posted on Instagram and Flickr.

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.

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