Although I know that I definitely had friends during my early high school years, I remember spending an awful lot of time alone in my bedroom, talking to people I didn't know on a kinda lame online forum (for the fans of Saddle Creek Record Label), and taking many too many photographs of myself to post online and receive affirmation of my attractiveness from weird probably old guys on the internet. Before you pass judgement, I have a feeling that almost anyone around my age likely went through a similar phase of simultaneous vanity and insecurity.

Thankfully, since then, I have dropped the vanity part and now just feel generally insecure a lot of the time about my appearance and believe only the negative things that people say about it (which I think is mostly me reminding myself of the kid in middle school who exclaimed at me, "My GOD you're ugly!" - I have a sort of encyclopedic memory of instances when I felt humiliated and ashamed...yet I can never seem to remember where my keys are!).

I'm digressing, though. My point here is basically that today I found myself back in the old mode of taking photos of myself to post on the internet. The cool thing is that I have an actual reason to do this - because I am now officially a published freelance writer (it's kind of a lame topic, but it feels good getting paid for doing what I studied in college), and so I need a sweet picture of myself to use for my profile. So I thought it might be kinda ~*fun*~ to post some of the pictures in the running. Unfortunately it seems like the problem with taking pictures of myself alone in my bedroom means that a lot of the pictures are pretty "myspace-y." I'm not sure they even actually look like me.

***Update*** I sort of came to realize that when I used this as my profile picture, I looked more like a mail-order bride than a freelance writer. Life is hard.

I'm going to post my favorite behind the cut. Click to view.

I hope that if I'm ever arrested, this can be used as my mug shot. Man, I look tough here.