so i’m nearing my 10,000th edit on openstreetmap.
wild. i’ve been thinking a lot about what that actually means.
what started as a hobby - or maybe an obsession - has slowly become a record of care.
a way to see.
a way to let others see.
mapping Bangkok, piece by piece.
making it just a little more visible.
a little more precise.
a little more known - to others,
and to myself.
i’ve been thinking a lot about maps.
about what this whole thing has meant - not just as a mapper,
but as a local voice,
a small thread in a bigger web, by others.
by myself.
by the place itself.
piece by piece.
making it just a little more visible.
a little more precise.
a little more known - to others,
and to myself.
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i’ve always loved maps.
even when i didn’t know the word for what i was feeling.
as a kid, i was drawn to them like magnets.
atlases in bookshops. globes with soft pastel oceans.
the tiny maps printed on the backs of business cards.
spatial things made me feel calm.
made me feel like the world could be held in my hands.
Vast space compress into something compact, 2 dimensional.
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my first game was simcity 4 - my dad played it.
i didn’t really get it,
but i still did play it.
a lot,
to much, maybe.
then came minecraft.
and yeah, like every gen z kid,
i was obsessed. not the survival part.
i built cities.
creative model.
little parks and structures.
entire worlds.
i think i was looking for something i hadn’t seen yet in real life.
or maybe building the kind of place i wanted to see.
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i still don’t know where the fascination comes from.
maybe it’s an autistic special interest.
maybe it’s just how i’ve always tried to make sense of things - through shapes,
through patterns,
through place.
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it was the monsoon season of 2021.
midst of covid lockdown. my last year of high school. rain on the roof every day.
i opened openstreetmap one night and… that was it.
the editor was slow, clunky, frustrating - but something about it felt right.
i mapped a street.
then my school.
then a neighborhood.
then a whole district.
and then i edit.
and edit.
like nothing else matters.
i know it’s not healthy.
i know i’m not supposed to feel this alive hunched over a screen, tracing lines, renaming bus stops, aligning satellite tiles until my eyes blur.
but it satisfies something.
something deep.
something hidden in a place i don’t have a name for.
a warm ache in the center of me that only quiet edits can soothe.
so i keep going.
i expand.
translating tools like josm into thai, writing wiki articles, answering forum posts like i’ve been part of this community forever.
and maybe i have.
maybe this is my hometown, too.
not the real one, but the mapped one.
the shared one.
the infinite, editable one.
and now i’m here.
thousands of edits later.
still tracing, still tagging.
still trying to name things.
still looking for a way to understand the world a little better.
openstreetmap is familiar to me now.
like an old friend.
like a ritual.
and somewhere along the way i realized - 
i believe in open-source.
i believe in open-content.
i believe geographical data is a human right.
i believe it should be free.
for everyone.
forever.
and yes - 
i do love openstreetmap <3
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thanks for reading. if you’re here, you probably get it.
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🗺️✳️
krittin