Slow Down, Enjoy the Experience

A few years ago, my wife and I heard of an event being held in a park on the outskirts of Gainesville called Kanapaha Botanical Gardens. The event was the Moonlight Walk, and was designed to give visitors an interesting and romantic impression of the gardens as they slowly walked through it, appreciating the plant life and the park ambiance. And the walk was very well designed, Melissa and I enjoying the experience. The only drawback to it was that most of the visitors seemed to be on a fast track, walking (and sometimes even running) quickly around us. Sometimes we had to even step aside to let through groups of rushing visitors. So instead of a relaxed exploration of this park at night, we instead were continually badgered from behind by people in an inexplicably big hurry to get through the walk as quickly as possible. It made me wonder why all these people even bothered to take the time to go there in the first place.

Lots of things in life are like that park experience. For example, I’ll sometimes find myself rushing through a novel, quickly skimming through descriptive sections to get to the “plot-flow” parts. But I’m missing out on an awful lot of the reading experience when I do that. Or take blogging, as another example. How many people do blog searches to just to gather information about a specific topic? They may run across several blogs in pursuit of their desired item, never pausing to explore any of them in detail to see what they are about. To be perfectly frank, I’m not too keen on my blog being used in this manner. I allow searches on Google as a means to introduce readers to this blog, but it is not really an informational blog per se. It is rather designed to be a simple journal of my various opinions and experiences, and as such is rather personal in nature. So I would prefer that people read it as a day-to-day narrative. I recognize the enormous well of information sources already out there on the Internet, and so should others. The only really new information that you’re going to get here are (my) opinions and (my) personal stories. So slow down, sit back, relax, and read! (And comments are welcome.)