A New Experiment

While the concept of “blogging” has existed for several years, it has taken me a while to attempt to get my feet wet experimenting with the medium.  In the past I have tended to post pictures at a photography themed website. I also write my thoughts in essays to friends and families.  I have considered blogging in the past, but the question that always occurred to me was – who cares!  What do I have to offer in this medium that is unique?  Will anybody care other than close friends and family?  Something that has changed is that I now have more time on my hands.  The challenge of this new format beckons.  I need to better understand what it is all about and see where it takes me.  I will not be ambitious and I will post when the mood hits.  I will take it as it comes.

What do I think I will write about?  A little bit of history may be in order.  A few years ago, I started spending more time during the weekends at a park not too far from home.  The C&O Canal National Historical Park soon became my regular weekend haunt.  It essentially changed my life.  I spent hours in the park, walking, running, taking pictures, and basically lost in my own thoughts, surrounded by nature and all to myself.  My photographic experience exploded, and I also started putting down my thoughts on paper.  There was (and still is) something about the experience that tended to open up the mind.  Words to help get the sometimes strange thoughts and conclusions onto paper started coming easily.  Topics that went through the mind were unpredictable. And friends and family seemed to appreciate it.  I was hooked.

Several years have passed and life has changed in many ways.  Who knows if the mind is still as active as it used to be.  Creativity is something that cannot be forced.  But I am in a better situation to let my mind wander and delve into off-beat topics that are still of interest to me.  So I am going to try to write about them.  I will mix this writing with content from some old e-mails which I still find interesting.  My broad experience in the world of digital communications and entertainment, and the associated hardware and software areas, has given me much insight into how things work, and significant reason to pause for thought.  I think that in the advanced societies of today we are a long way removed from basic realities, even though basic necessities still remain unchanged and are essential for existence.  Further, our world survives on a foundation of human development supported by many man-made technologies, each of which has its own issues.  We have created a very complex system.  Do we even understand what are we doing to ourselves over time?  Why are we doing this to ourselves?  What is the point of all this development?  What would the philosophers of yore have to say about the realities of today if they were to experience it?

I like to write about my experiences in the park.  It does not matter what the season is (and believe me, we experience a wide range of  weather conditions where we live), I am out there several times a month.  I run when the woods around me are green and I run when they are brown. I will run in the snow, rain, wind and sun.  I will stop to examine the trees and the flowers along the trail. I will stop to try to get closer to a wild animal or a bird so that I can get a picture or two.  I will do strange things in the woods.

I am also attracted by topics that occasionally crop up in conversations that are not in the mainstream.   The Internet can prove to be a valuable resource in these cases if one is careful with the references.  Perhaps I will provide links to some of these articles, with my own associated thoughts on the topic.  Anything goes.

So I will start this series off with the first e-mail I had sent out at the time I was discovering the C&O canal.  Hopefully you will come back for some more.