A Blip Year

So I made it. Today is the 365th consecutive daily blip, in a journey that started by the side of a snowy road last December.

I'm not sure why I decided to take the plunge on that day, but I wouldn't have known about blipfoto without following @lawrie's tweets, so the first thanks go to him.

Early on, the blipfoto community made me welcome, and showed me how it was so much more than a space to publish a daily journal, it was a group of people to engage with and to get to know. Thanks to experienced blippers @gblrps, @cabbagetree,
@lelpix, @CanCarrier and @chaiselongue - all of whom found me in my first week on here, and have remained constructive and supportive since.

@neilheyes became the first friend to follow me on here, and proved the viral nature of social media.

@Cider12 and @jt have been a great source of comment and chat over many months, even when I've been going through dry spells.

Given the global nature of blipfoto, it's also been great to start developing a lovely local network of blippers in Bradford district, folk who you sometimes also bump into in the real world: @yearofhappy, @earthdreamer, @Wendles56, @jeanneb56, @appertunity, @PaulFS, @Alicemaylara and others. This is a journal that is very situated in place, so it's been satisfying to have fellow blippers to share different views of the city and the moors that we inhabit.

I should also thank the many folk who are invisible to the blipfoto world, but who've helped circulate my blips to a wider audience, mainly through retweets on Twitter (which explains my relatively low comments:views ratio). It's my twitter friends who also encouraged me on here in the first place, by responding nicely to photos and poems that I post there.

Here are ten personal favourites from the early months of the journal that you might not have seen before:

Weird Mill
Winter Solstice Sun
Icicle Grass
Thaw on the Moor
Broken Lives
Tools of the Trade
Rainbow Birch
Exit Stage Left
Rain
Cenotaph Fly-past

Last thanks, as always, to my family who have just about learned to tolerate my distractedness when I sniff the opportunity of a blip.

365 up, and the next year starts tomorrow, and hopefully news of an exciting blip project to share with you in the new year.

collecting catkins ~ to make a whole year ~ these days are numbered