Seeing

Two years of looking, two years of seeing, two years of sharing your pictures and mine. It’s been so much more of an adventure than I could have imagined back when I posted that rather feeble first photo 730 days ago. My 365th felt like a huge achievement; this one, I guess because taking a photo has become so integral to each day, feels less of a milestone, more everyday. So, for the first time on a blipday, this is unprepared and unplanned. Of the many things I’ve learnt in the last two years, one of the best is that a picture will come: each day has its own offerings and all I have to do is stay alert enough to notice them. Often I’ve found a photo then someone walks into or out of the frame, the wind moves something, the sun goes in. I humph and wait for the previous state to be restored, only to realise too late that what I didn’t want was actually a more interesting picture than what I’d previously fixed on. So now I’m trying to see every change around me as a new opportunity and to react fast.

This picture is a discreet selfie, with dawn about to happen behind me, looking out through the huge front window of the Eye Hospital. I got there as the early-shift staff were arriving to try to persuade them to reinstate the operation I was scheduled to have tomorrow but which, I heard on Saturday, has been postponed. It feels appropriate to my blipday that this is a whole made of many parts and that it reflects many of the themes that interest me. It feels appropriate too that my image is fragmented, on the day that I hoped would be the last such. Never mind. It’s only a cataract, I’m lucky that it’s treatable and that it will be, soon.

I appreciate the photos, the conversations, the banter and the poetry here every day, but this is a good time to say THANK YOU! to all you wonderful, supportive, encouraging blip-people. I’ve learnt such a lot from you. And I like you! I'm only sorry that I can't spend more time here or comment more. But I know you understand – we all have to fit life in somewhere round the edges.

Quite fun large, if you can be bothered. Hunt the car that's pretending to be a flash reflection!