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100facesof.me

Day 100 of 100

Shirtless torso of a heavily tattooed man, hands clasped at waist, Apple Watch on wrist, gray beard visible at top, blue backdrop.
Day 100
Shirtless torso of a bearded man with elaborate color tattoos across chest and arms, hands folded at waist.
Day 1
Day 100 / 100 Weight 295.1 kinda sad it is ending Sony A7R5 24mm f/4.5 1/100 ISO 200

“All things start with surrender”

The very first step of Alcoholics Anonymous says that “we admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.”

The first step is surrender. Surrender to the process. When I started AA I had no idea if I could finish the steps or where it would take me, but I knew I had surrendered to what was to come.

In many ways, this project was the same. That first photo of me without my shirt was me surrendering. Surrendering to my body image, to my lack of self-confidence, to my disappointment of where I was at the moment. A “6 out of 10” I wrote. That might have been generous.

I look at the last picture. Me shirtless. Vulnerable to the world. Some will say that it is a better picture because I lost weight. I say it’s a better picture because I lost fear.

When I started the 100 day photo project I had no idea where it would go. I didn’t even mean to write these stories, but photos need captions, and that first story poured out of me.

I have learned so much over the last year I worked on this project. I learned that even with the wrinkles and scars, my face could be beautiful. I didn’t need to hide it. I learned that I was someone people didn’t mind being around or supporting, and I found self-confidence. I learned that failure as much as I preached its value was actually valuable in the fact that I took more than 10,000 photos to find 100.

We start to live when we surrender. We start to grow and change and evolve. We finally step away from the thing we feared most — our true selves — and moved into a life of acceptance.

So here you go. 100 photos and stories that are all about my life. I know that these stories impacted many people. Several found their way into recovery. Others found a kindred spirit that validated them as human. And others saw me transform from an unsure, insecure man into a self-aware, self-confident one.

And I thank each of you for coming along the ride.

Micah