LD 171. 3650 - now on to the next ten....

Although this is my 3650th blip , those are not consecutive.   It will be Hogmanay before I notch up ten years of blipping every day, with the odd back blip when time and circumstances demanded it.

I suppose I have a few thoughts on getting the red ballon and the  red badge.  The first is that I didn’t expect to still be blipping after all that time - I started in order to see if I could record a single election year.   But like many other blippers  it became part of my life and is now not only recreational, but instructive and also a useful aide memoire.    The button that shows you your entry from the previous year or the subsequent one,  is I find used more and more. 

I have learnt a lot about photography, developed at least a bit, my “eye” (the indispensable attribute in “seeing” a photograph and learning how to improve ) and made new friends, whilst encouraging others to blip too, some of whom are catching up on me.

Deciding what would make a suitable picture for today hasn’t taken as much time as marking previous milestones, probably because I have been so busy.   In fact I saw this yesterday and decided it said lots of things for my milestone blip today.   It would also, i thought, make a good photograph.   My extra one, by the way, is the tactile map of the Scottish Parliament Campus that sits outside the main visitors entrance. 

Firstly the main picture emphasises what an extraordinary time through which  we are living .  The coronavirus has been not only unexpected  and unique but tough for us all.   It still is as the pandemic is far from over , and my “LD” designation for my blips will continue until we get to Phase 4 of the Scottish Road Map, which of course wasn’t today.

Secondly this has been one of my workplaces for the last decade and has featured in lots of blips.   It is a building I still love and I will miss it a little when I leave next year though I have lots of other things to do and ideas to pursue.   It will continue to mean a lot to me and many others  and so  it should not just because it is full of good people trying to do their best for their fellow citizens but also because there is unfinished business there too.   It needs to move on from being good at some things to being good at all things - to move on from devolution to taking the responsibility of being the powerhouse parliament of an independent  member state in the EU.  

Thirdly there has never been as great a threat to it, and to the work it does for the people of Scotland, as that presented by the UK’s Internal Market Bill which was published yesterday and on which I made a statement today in this very building.  Fighting and finding the way to beat that threat is uppermost in my mind at the moment.

And finally I have posted more blips from home this year, because of lockdown, than every before and not a single one from outside Scotland in more than six months which is unique , in my record anyway.    Travel has been and will remain very restricted so taking familiar places and objects and seeing them anew is increasingly the task for all blippers.   That also helps to focus on what pictures are, what images mean  and how to make oneself a better photographer and visual communicator.

Anyway thanks to all those who drop by here regularly and particularly those who comment.  I don’t respond often enough, nor comment on other as frequently as I should.     I hope to do less, and more (so to speak) when I can from next year.

And thanks to Blipfoto for being there.   Joe had a great idea, and that idea continues to flourish as a result of the members themselves .  

On to the next ten (I hope!)