Embarrassing nudge (day 111)

I started the self-surveillance project almost a month ago now.   At some point I was telling someone about it and they asked if I was also taking a picture of myself every 15 minutes.  I had thought about it but decided against it because I thought it was a bit tacky to include pics of myself in an art context.  But after talking with this person, I reconsidered.  I reasoned that one can never be too rich or have too much data.  So last week I started taking pictures of myself on the macbook, the only one of my computers with a built-in camera that could easily be coaxed into taking the picture. 

This experiment has not been good for my self-esteem.  But it may be good for modesty.   Almost none of the shots are flattering.  In almost all of them I'm looking absent-minded, bored, or just unhealthy.  Granted, some of this is from the camera angle and the bad lighting but still looking at a computer is not the most embodied experience, and it shows.  The best pics were when I was watching a TEDxSV talk...I think there was some sort of performance that I was really enjoying.  There were also some pretty intense pics when I was updating my web site profile.

But here is the upshot of all this.  Knowing that the camera will spring to action every 15 minutes, I've become more conscious of my body.  By virtue of seeing shot after embarassing shot, I've trained myself at least a little bit to stay present -- an unexpected benefit from an unlikely source.

And now to conquer some of my fear...here is an example of an embarrassing shot.  It's not the worst.  I'm not that advanced yet.  The next shot is one of the intense ones.

A song for this post.