The Hardest Battle

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.  ~e.e. cummings, 1955

Today's Picture the Holidays prompt was "express yourself."  The post mentioned self-portraits.   The whole thing made me a little twitchy.  My hair is awful today--I'm weeks beyond needing a cut.  It needs coloring, too.  I'm feeling tired and have dark circles under my eyes.  I don't photograph that well on a good day.  Today?  No way was I taking a picture of myself.  So I worked on writing some things about what being me means to me.  Who am I?  What am I?  What is important to me?  What makes me me?  I thought maybe I would do a quick collage or art journal page.  That's self-expression, right?  And then I could just take a photograph of that.  But this didn't feel right.  So I let the thoughts simmer all day.  And then I knew.

I'm a writer.  I'm a lot of other things, too, but it always comes back to words for me.  Books and writing and pens and journals...those are the things that are nearest and dearest to me, at least in the inanimate categories.  And then I knew.  A self-portrait was exactly the right thing.  Here it is: