Ten Year Challenge

 Round these parts, on Social Media there appears to be a bit of thing going on normally headed up as "Ten Year Challenge" the idea seems to be to post a photo of yourself from ten years ago and then a current one.   A few of my friends have been doing this for a couple of years now, I have managed to avoid it, largely on the basis that yen years was a bit to long a time for me. (Of course there are photos of me at that sort of age, there's even one that is 30 years old on Facebook today!) In those days the world was still experiencing me in a very different way, but it has just dawned on me that it is now over ten years since I started to let (at least certain honoured) parts of the world experience me as myself.

Checking through old posts here I find that there are actually quite a few photos from around 10 years ago, not all of them ones I'm proud of any more, I've done a lot of growing up over the last ten years! Surprisingly some of the clothes I still have and wear, this green dress is an example, indeed I wore this again only last week. There are plenty of others that I have either disposed of, or keep hidden at the back of the wardrobe to serve as a reminder of what not to wear! If memory serves me right then it was not long after this photo was taken that I abandoned my wigs and started to wear my own hair, appropriately styled.

It's strange looking back on what I was up to around the turn of the years 2011/2012 I was obviously very self absorbed, and not a nice person to live with. I wonder how my family managed to put up with me through all that period. I was finding it increasingly difficult to manage two personas, it was causing me and everybody else stress, this was about the time when I was gradually beginning to realise I had to make some choices, and that I had to be selfish about it and do what I needed, otherwise I would be spoiling my life and that of everybody around me. I think that around that time I was taking a lot of selfies, just by way of some form of self validation, trying to see myself how I wanted to be seen.

Certainly these days I find I am taking very few photos, and of those few even fewer are of me! Indeed the problem wasn't finding an old photo but a current one! I have quite a few from 2020 that I rater like but I can actually only find a couple from 2021 at all. Maybe it's a sign of the growing ease with which I live with myself, these days my validation comes much more from my music and my relationships. Somehow appearances feel much less important than they did a few years ago maybe that's why I just don't seem to be bothering about the selfies any more.

Anyway I think this may be this is the photo that sums up 2021 best!