Cake for breakfast (and dinner)

I've never been a fan of the self-portrait. There, I said it.


They often feel self-congratulatory, self-important, self-conscious.
This opinion started to shift while reading The Yellow House, the story of the time Van Gogh and Gauguin spent together in a yellow house in the south of France. In their correspondence they traded self-portraits, as a way to explicate their self-perceptions. Both were self-important and self-conscience, but fully human in their insecurities. I found it particularly amusing that Gauguin framed himself as Jean Valjean, the struggling good guy/criminal in Les Miserables.
This was interesting, but not forefront in my mind until I washed my hands in the bathroom of my favorite Mexican restaurant. I was faced a Frido Kahlo self-portrait where the mirror should be. There she was, looking back at me, instead of myself. I wondered if she could have imagined herself hanging in the bathroom of a cheap Mexican restaurant in Eastern Tennessee? Just like me, not expecting to find myself here, looking like this, doing this.

I take pictures every day of the things I find beautiful and real and in-this-moment only. This collision of historical self-portraits gave me pause: How would a self-portrait reflect this search for reality and beauty? Isn't my youth, my in-this-moment me real and beautifully fleeting?
So when I got home and cut myself a piece of anniversary-cake, I set the camera down with the timer on and let it go. I normally don't alter my pictures at all (I'm going for reality here) but since I wanted the self-portraits to reflect my perception of the moment I've messed with the colors a bit to reflect the nostalgia I was feeling.

Warm sun, through the broken blinds.
Home from work, changed into jeans, took off button-down,
left in tank top.
Listening to This American Life.
Thinking about MY American Life as I wash the dishes.
Anniversary-cake to celebrate:
clean kitchen, washed dishes
3 years
life.

And today, I feel like this:

A comic book archetype of Office Worker Slacker, who blogs instead of working, who takes Casual Friday too far in her favorite worn t-shirt when the boss is out, who rolls her eyes and snaps a picture while her coworkers bore her.