I’m old enough to remember what life was like before email, the internet, all the wonderful technology that has both improved and confused our lives. Not long ago, I waxed nostalgic (what else are you gonna wax? Okay, the car, perhaps…) about the differences in communication when I was young, and how things are, now.

I remember having pen pals. Long distance phone calls were expensive; not to mention, there was only one phone in our place. It was mounted on the kitchen wall, and it had a long-ish cord, but unless no one else was home, everyone knew who you were talking to and what you were saying. Letters were more private affairs, and at least speaking for myself, I wrote (and often rewrote) each line with care. I thought carefully about what I said.

The anticipation of a letter back was a sweet thing; a delight to find something special with my name on it in the mailbox that hung by the door. There was a special pleasure and innocence in reading hand-written words meant just for me, regardless of who wrote them.

This progress photo obviously is not me.

Unfortunately, this has become a dying art form, and a well-written letter truly was a cherished thing, read and reread, kept. Not a single LOL or a WTF in any of them. We led more deliberate and thought-out lives. I’m sure I don’t have to explain how times have changed; after all, what medium are you using to read this very blog? How often can you now throw out a casual status update, text a friend, or drop an email to your boss, your client, your mother?

While our methods of communication have changed, one thing has not: we still craft ourselves as we want to be seen rather than revealing who we truly are. In the old days, distance allowed us to distract, divert, or only share the best of ourselves. Things are not so different, these days; many of us project a second — perhaps better — version of ourselves online, hiding the faults and scars of our daily lives.

We hide behind selfies that required twenty retakes until we are happy with the result. We use old photos for profile pics because we firmly believe we looked better in those days than we do, now. We craft and present the world with a cleaned up version of ourselves.

When I first started this journey, I swore that I would not do this, but the truth is that I still often do. Perhaps it’s human nature to want to be seen in a certain light, and I’m probably about average when it comes to vanity; I promised myself I’d always keep a current photo up on social media, but the truth is, I just recently ditched a 10-year-old photo on LinkedIn. I was thinner, then. In my own mind, I looked better then than I do, now. I know that my outward appearance has no bearing on how well I perform my chosen career, but there’s part of me that believes a potential client may well believe that it does.

It’s a mask many of us wear, and speaking for myself, I need to discard the fear of losing that mask. I am who I am; I may not look like the person I was a year ago, ten years ago, thirty years ago — but it hardly matters, does it? We tend to keep or discard people in our lives based on who they are, not what they look like.

The older I become, the less tolerance I have for shallowness. That said, I’ve recently realized that I fully expect other people to be shallow and make judgments about me based on my physical appearance. It’s why I don’t post progress photos on a blog that deals entirely with weight loss. Unfortunately, there are many people out there that judge a person’s worth by the number on a scale — but it seems to me that those people are not here. I worry that people I believe are friends would see those progress photos, and instead of being happy for me, they might be critical behind my back, or use my progress photos in ways I’d rather not imagine.

I have no idea if this perception is accurate. I am not done with my journey, so I’m not sure what people expect to see in such things. Mind you, I’m proud of my progress, and I have shared progress photos with people who are close to me. But I fear that doing so in a more public way could, perhaps, damage the mental strength I’ve been careful to build.

On the flip side, I hope that people who follow my words, here, find hope and strength to battle whatever demons keep them in their own locked cages. Will it help them to see someone like me, with all my imperfections, making progress, even if the progress is not yet complete? I don’t know.

If you have an opinion on the matter, I’d like to hear it.