Care in The Community

Today I went for a wee run an annual affair with a group of wildly varying running ability. This the sixth iteration of this annual New Years Day run. The membership changes, we’ve run marathons, park runs, half marathons, raised lots of money for charity, trained together, inspired each other… but arguably the best thing we’ve done is be excellent to each other and consequently have discovered and grown friendships.
 
Today Rachel known on blip as YearofHappy was part of the running group and today marked her 5th anniversary of blip. (segways seamlessly into what I really wanted to say). Which on the special blip day for the blipphoto reminds me….
 
When I started to blip some years ago, I did so with the intention of developing and improving my photography, and soon additionally to do a 365 project. What I didn’t know, but have discovered in many ways is that this is more than a photo sharing site, but very much community. A community where pretty much all the time people are excellent to each other. I’ve been surprised to find that when a baby is born in another country of a blip friend I smile to myself for the rest of the day, or when someone has say an operation, it’s on my mind for a time. When I’ve shared something happy to me, I feel the warm smiles of other blippers. When something sad happens such as terrorist atrocities, somehow the collective community of blip holds this in a helpful way. Then so called virtual friendships become real world encounters and we find conversation flows, as if we’ve know one and other for ages, and we find ourselves bemusedly glad to have stumbled into community, not just photo posting.
 
So as we wonder about blipfuture, for me I don’t much care if my photos go, I’ve got copies of most of them, I’d be a bit sad to see some of narrative of life these last few years disappear, but the thing that would be the biggest loss for me would be the loss of an interesting, lovely, varied, authentic, generous, funny, daft, creative, gifted, sharing and caring community, curated by both ordinary and extraordinary photo’s.
 
   I just retaken the pledge and hope others feel able to as well. blipfutureplrdge