Perspective

I don't know why I keep waxing philosophical these days, but another big issue keeps showing up that I want to share, mainly with girls and women who are younger than I am.

I'm not in photos very often for a couple of reasons.

1. I'm the unofficial family photographer, both because I do a little better job of it, but mainly because I am the one who usually THINKS of getting out the camera and using it.

2. I don't always feel like I look good enough to be in a picture. (I don't have on make-up, my hair isn't done, etc.) and when I do think I look okay, I'm too embarrassed to ask someone else to take a picture of me.

Well, I've just started developing all our old digital photos from when the kids were little, a month or so at a time, and guess what - I think I looked pretty good, much better than I do now.

It's that way with professional family pictures too. There are some that I really hated of me at the time, but now, five or so years later, I realize that I looked a lot better then than I thought I did, but I didn't appreciate it.
Even haircuts that I hated then look pretty good to me now, since my hair hasn't really gotten better with age.

One other thing I noticed is that I somehow always look mad or grumpy in photos at times when I didn't think I looked good and someone wanted to take a picture of me. I've finally also realized that I ALWAYS look better when I smile, even without make-up. I don't want my grandkids and great-grandkids to look at pictures of me and think that I was a grumpy old woman. (Even though my kids KNOW that I am, I want everyone else to at least wonder what I was like.)

So this has led me to just grin and bear it when photos are being taken. I want to look back in a few years and see how much better I look now.

(Oh no, how much worse will I look in five more years?)