Flickr

Okay, maybe you're not as obsessed with Flickr as I am. I'm totally hooked. It all started just before Christmas. Nong tells me her friend has some photos on-line. We look. They're not too interesting, but the idea grabs me. I sign up. I start uploading baby photos. I invite family and friends to look. Nobody does. Whatever.

Then, Christmas hits me in the gut, and I'm feeling homesick for cinnamon and wrapping paper. When everyone is asleep, I find myself in front of the screen scrolling through thousands of photos of people decorating Christmas cookies. I feel connected. It helps a little.

You see, no matter what people are doing in the computer-savvy, camera-owning world, they are posting pictures of it daily. Thousands of them. As a former cultural historian type, I find it fascinating. As a girl half a world away from most of the things she loves, I find it comforting. Even though I don't have an oven, can't find truly fresh butter, and won't pay the equivalent of $7 for a bag of chocolate bits, I can plunk myself down and see people making cookies. People making cookies TODAY. In places where it's snowing and Christmas music is playing. It helps more than a little.

Christmas is over, and my attention has turned from food to knitting. Our little family is headed into the cold later this year, and I'm itching to finger some wool. Here we have only cheap acrylic and low grade cotton, so while I'm making the best of it, I'm getting a nightly fix of knitting WIP's (works in progress) and FO's (finished objects) by the thousands.

I even posted my low-grade cotton WIP to a knitting pool, and I GOT A COMMENT TODAY! Way cool. I'm not alone. Someone's actually looking! (891 someones as of this evening, actually.)

And, with my new camera in hand, I have given myself a project for 2007. Project 365. A photo a day for a year. A slide show glimpse of my year. A photo diary. Turns out it's not an original idea and a whole bunch of people who are doing the same thing are looking at my photos. Validation.

So, while I watch the odometer spin on my little photo page, I hope you'll take a look a Flickr too. No matter what you're interested in, there are thousands of people taking pictures of it and uploading every day.