Dear Me: I Love You

The picture you see is a doodle I made last night.  I looked in the mirror at myself and the negative inner dialogue started.  I had to stop myself though.  I decided to invite “Positive” inside and push the negative out.  I started telling myself things like, “You can do this.  You will succeed.  You are great.  You are beautiful.  You are successful.”  I wrote this out and took a picture of it so that I could constantly remind myself of these words.  My inner voice is terrible and unloving sometimes.  I had to silence it last night with positive words of love to myself.

How important is it to love yourself?  It’s the first part of loving others.  Believe in what the Bible says or not, you have to agree that “Love your neighbor as you love yourself,” is a GREAT verse (Matthew 22:39).  Have you ever noticed that we tend to focus on the loving your neighbor part but not the loving yourself?  This seems like the key to the entire verse.  How can you love others if you don’t love yourself?  I battle with this too so I’m talking to myself.  I just wanted to share what I’ve been thinking about lately.

Love yourself so that you CAN love others effectively.  Take time for yourself – just a little bit each day.  If you never give yourself any time, you will begin to resent others when they ask for help.  Do something that makes you happy.  Write in a journal, read a book, take a walk, go to the gym – show yourself love so that you can show your love to others.  It’s important.

Dear Me: I love you.

Amateur Photographer

That’s right! I am now an amateur photographer selling my photos on BigStockPhoto.com! My gallery of 47 images can be viewed at the following link: http://www.bigstockphoto.com/profile/JaneEmily

As of yet, none have sold, but that is not the accomplishment. To me, the accomplishment was taking 47 photos that were considered good enough to be accepted by a stock photo site. I can’t tell you the feeling of achievement this gives me. I bought my camera for this very purpose a little over a year ago and now it has finally come to fruition.

This is only the beginning. I plan to upload my photos to many other stock photo sites and hopefully make a nice little side business out of it. I have a lot to learn about photography. I’ve got a few books to read and I hope to take some classes to learn more.

UPDATE: Just sold my first image! No longer an amateur! Officially professional now!