Shoes

Looking back on my diary all I could see was the mundane tasks that I undertake on a daily basis and the many different roles I play. There are very few moments when I feel I am myself and I often feel my days are spent meeting everyone else’s demands. I now work two jobs but before I undertook this new second job I was already working full-time but because I was working from home everyone presumed I could make time to run their errands. Now that my working day is even longer and I can no longer run their errands immediately it is causing a little friction. I feel tied to my home and working with my husband but I get up each morning put on my face, slide into whichever role I am playing and carry on.

I have compartmentalized my life into sections much like the different shoes I wear, some of these compartments are used more than others, some less so. It is a balance and I am still trying to find it.

At the moment only three shoes / areas of my life are getting regular attention but often areas overlap and there is also no defining shoe for motherhood to add to the mix. Perhaps If I had included an object beside the shoes I could have somehow shown this and possibly removed the text.

My final set of images explore the different ‘shoes’ that make up my days… my compartments in life. I chose not to include my bare feet as these are only evident when I sleep so I don’t feel like they appear in my life. Funny how I seem to feel that I have somehow ‘lost’ myself, so much so that I don’t even acknowledge my own bare feet!

You can sometimes tell a lot by people’s shoes: How they walk, shape and size, what they might do, if they are rich or poor. But they never show you the real person, a bit like a selfie but factually more honest.

Reflection

I struggled with this assignment and yet it was the one I was most looking forward too. I had explored selfie’s a little bit earlier on in the course and had thought I would use that but I decided to venture down a different road.

I am not overly happy with this assignment or my final image, nothing quite came together as I had imagined.

I think my biggest struggle was putting myself under a microscope so to speak, this is why I like to be behind the camera; I use it to hide behind.

The ideas themselves might have worked but the biggest question to decide if this assignment has been successful is ‘Do I recognise myself?’ (It is a self-portrait after all) and I can honestly say no. But then I don’t think I could ever see myself in them as I am so many different things to so many different people that I rarely consider who I am to me.

I know this assignment will need a complete start to finish re-work but perhaps this needs to come at a better time in my life, once I get the work /life balance right and I can take a moment to breathe.