A Tale of 100 Blips

When my friend Bethanne started sending me a series of weird gray emails a year or so ago, directing me to look at Blipfoto, I saw that she had taken up photography. Not only that, she was good! I know her primarily as a writer, so this new creative turn was unexpected.

She really liked the site, the community, and soon she was talking about it all the time. Then she started to nag me about joining. "You're already shooting pictures anyhow," she said. "And if you can't Blip you can BackBlip, or you can just skip a day and go Blipless if you really want to..."

I wondered about all the Blipping lingo, but cautiously agreed to check it out.

At first I didn't really expect to be able to post every day, and the pressure to always find a great photo was heavy on me. But somehow, I did post every day...except the one day I lost toward the beginning when my camera's time was set wrong.

"Did you Blip yet?" became my husband's greeting when he got home from work, like it was a physical necessity. In a way, it is. Like brushing my teeth, taking my Thyroid pill, eating meals. I have accepted Blipping as part of my daily ritual, and it ticks away in the back of my mind like an alarm clock waiting to go off, until the shot has been captured and groomed in Photoshop and successfully uploaded.

Sometimes I forget until late in the day and barely catch the fading light, but I go back outside anyhow. I am really getting into the journal aspect of this site, the idea that what we are all doing is record-keeping. We're creating an enormous visual time capsule.

And I have grown to treasure the relationships formed with my fellow Blippers from around the globe. You are a remarkable and talented group of people. Also very compassionate and supportive. Bravo to you all! I love your work and I love your play.

A photographer for over forty years, I work as a freelance graphic designer and web developer. Lately I've been writing novels*, too, so I spend a lot of time alone sitting with my laptop. Blipfoto has been an invaluable procrastination outlet and fulfilling time-waster whenever I'm stuck with my writing.

It's the first thing I check when I start up the computer in the morning, and the last thing I look at before I shut down at night. My friends and family members tell me the same. They have become addicted to my journal, and to some of yours. Me too.

Peeking into your lives every day is fascinating, entertaining and broadening. It gives me a sense of the bigger world.

Snippets of the human genre encapsulated in intense little vignettes, in color or black and white, sent winging electronically sparkling zaps shooting along wires and flashing through the air, from you to me and vice versa? You gotta love it!

Hanging around for the full 365.

See you tomorrow!

*"Destined, a Novel of the Tarot" is out as an e-book now and will be in paperback this spring, soon to be followed by "Secrets We Keep," a romantic suspense story.

P.S.: There are 100 stones in the jar. ~Gail