Reaching the End of My Selfie a Day for a Year Project
As I write this on Monday, August 17th, there’s two more “selfie of the day” posts left for me to do before wrapping up the project. I thought I’d do a bit of a review of my thoughts about this project, as well as write about my plans for what I’m doing for the next daily project when this is over.
How it Started
Looking back, on August 18th, 2025 I posted a quick selfie from a screen recording I was doing:
Open up a recording app of some sort and take a #selfie, 2025-08-18 edition:
— Chris from 🇨🇦 (@ichris.bsky.social) August 18, 2025 at 2:39 PM
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And I remember thinking that maybe I would just post selfies like that and see if anyone else followed along. But then on my actual birthday where I turned 49, I had decided to turn it into a selfie a day project when I posted this:
There really wasn't a lot of planned out thought put into it about the rules for the selfies. I know I gave myself the freedom to skip a day if it didn't work out but that I'd just try to do it most days.
I had some friends ask whether I'd try and do it in the same spot so I could make a video recap. Nope. No plans for that. Sometimes there were multiple people in the selfies making it an ussie. I usually posted them to Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, and my private Instagram. But sometimes the cross-posting app failed so they didn't get posted everywhere. Sometimes I forgot to post to Instagram since I couldn't automate that one. Sometimes I posted multiple selfies in one day.
And sometimes I just forgot to take and post one at all.
How'd I do at the "per day" part?
This tool wasn't available when I started, but someone is building an AI tool called Attie on ATProtocol which allowed me to quickly check how often it thought I posted a selfie over the last year.
You can view the summary here, but here's the numbers it came up with:
- 252 posts with "selfie a day" in them
- 220 distinct days posted which I assume means 32 times I mentioned it but it wasn't actually a selfie that was included
- September and October 2025 were the months I hit the most selfies with 33 and 32 respectively. Which doesn't add up either?
- April 2026 was my lowest month with only 11. February 2026 not far behind with 13.
So if the numbers are accurate AND I finish off the last two days properly, it'll mean I hit 222 days out of 365. So 61% if my math is correct. A passing grade, but I would've guessed I did more than that. I'm also fine with that being what it is because some days I just didn't feel it or outright forgot.
Speaking of feelings...
How did doing a self a day make me feel?
If I had any motivation in starting it, it was to get more comfortable with seeing my face and taking selfies. And I feel like I accomplished that.
I still feel super awkward pulling out a phone in a public setting to take a selfie, which is why most of them are of me sitting by myself or with our dog. I had hoped to also get more comfortable with the rest of my body by taking selfies, but most of the pictures are of me from the shoulders up so that didn't really happen.
When I started the project, I was worried about how it might appear to be about vanity. That others would think I was doing it to show off or make others see my face more. And that's certainly what kept me from posting multiple days in a row sometimes, because I was tired of seeing my face and I assumed others would be even more tired of it.
But like getting comfortable with my own face, I also wanted to silence that voice that tells me to do things (or not) because of what others are thinking. I always assumed that voice would gradually fade as we leave high school, but in some ways it just keeps getting louder.
In reviewing the project with my wife, she reminded me of the Brené Brown talk referencing Theodore Roosevelt's Man in Arena speech - which I blogged about here back in February, 2025 - and I really try to keep that in mind when doing any sort of creative project like this.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
It's perhaps a bit lofty to ascribe a daily selfie or blogging to what Roosevelt was talking about, but if you're not "in the ring" with me posting daily selfies, blogging, podcasting, or whatever the thing is, your opinion of it is not all that important to me.
How did my selfie a day project affect you?
After saying your opinion is not that important, I'm curious if anything about my selfie a day project affected you in any way? Not so much in your opinion of me, though that is interesting as well perhaps, but I think that's for you to process.
But I'm more interested in whether it sparked any ideas or thoughts in you about how you view the act of taking a selfie, how you view yourself or those around you online vs offline, and whether you have any plans to do any sort of "...a day" project of your own with some measure of public accountability on social media?
As I've gotten closer to wrapping up the project, I've been surprised by the number of people who I had no idea were even paying attention to my project saying that they've noticed it's going to end and wondering what I'm going to do next. Or sad that I won't be posting selfies any more. 😆 On that last one, I hope if anything that the last year has taught me to get more comfortable posting selfies so it's not likely that I'll stop posting them. I just won't do it every single day.
What's next?
Originally I was going to just end the project and not start a new one. But after enough folks asked me what I was doing next, I kind of wanted to push myself to do it again. I asked on social media for ideas of what to do next and got back some interesting ideas:
- a drawing/doodle a day, must be 60 seconds or under. 🔗
- Instead of selfie-a-day, do a daily view where you share the most interesting (to you) view from wherever you are. 🔗
- Tree(s) of the day? Skies? 🔗
- media a day? like, movie or show a day is a long, but any media, so song, movie, tv episode, podcast, what have you? with a photo or not. 🔗
- Dance video of the day 🔗 (I nope'd that one pretty quick 😆)
- Random question or shower thought of the day. Like that dumb thing that is fleetingly in your brain that may end up in a strange google query or something. 🔗
But even before I asked for ideas, I knew what I should be doing. I just didn't want to say it out loud and admit it.
As for what it is, you'll have to tune in on Wednesday August 19th, 2026 to find out what I'm doing. 🤔😏
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