Looking back on a year of blogging

An article in the Globe and Mail newspaper caught our attention last week. It was titled “Buying time: Slow grocery checkouts boost connection in a hurried world.” The article described the introduction of a “slow lane” checkout in a grocery store in Red Deer, Alberta. The goal was to give older, lonely or anxious people an opportunity to connect with another person in a meaningful way while engaging in one of the most basic activities of everyday life.

This innovation, which seems counterintuitive in the era of self-checkouts, was first introduced in a Dutch supermarket in 2019. Since then, similar initiatives have sprouted in Edmonton, Alberta and in some cities in Britain and Japan. The article concluded: “Hopefully, we can make people feel good and maybe the community will get a little bit better because people are happier.”

The article made us smile, given that we had chosen Slow Lane Musings as a title for this blog. Our blog was launched in December 2022, and we thought it may be timely, if you would indulge us, to share a few thoughts about our experience with it as the year comes to a close.

Once we had settled into full retirement, we knew we wanted to have a creative project that we could work on together. We hoped to use our abundant free time to look more closely at all the beautiful things that surround us and find a channel to communicate our observations, mostly to family and friends. Since we both enjoyed writing and photography, a personal, non-commercial blog was an option. We were not fully conscious of the time and effort required to maintain a blog, but we said we would give it a try. 

We choose to write about things we have observed and topics we want to know more about. The first question we ask when a topic is proposed is “what is the musing here?” The second question is “would anybody be interested in reading about this?” If we can answer those questions to our satisfaction, we set out to draft the outline of a post. Sometimes, the focus of the post changes as it evolves, but the musing itself is key. We promised our readers that we would share a nugget of joy and a musing in each post. This is our goal.

The feature image we chose for this post, taken in Gatineau Park on an autumn morning, symbolizes the clarity that emerges from the fog of ideas during our creative and collaborative process. The batting of ideas back and forth between us is a lot of fun. We do not publish a post until we both agree on every aspect of the story.

We learned a lot as we researched each topic. We have also learned a great deal about the technical aspects of blogging. We are now much more familiar with the intricacies of the software platform we use (WordPress) and how to find and integrate royalty free music into a video. Through much trial and error, we are developing our photography and video editing skills.

The creation of a blog post can be intense. We hope that the innumerable drafts of both the written and the visual components lead to a more interesting and enjoyable final product. We have published thirty-six posts in just over a year and we have received many encouraging comments. We are grateful to all who choose to check out our slow lane.

A few people have asked us why we have not published anything in a while. Life happens and we had to deal with some urgent matters which, fortunately, were happily resolved. The blog is a hobby for us and although we set a goal of publishing two or three posts per month, we may not always be able to deliver. But be reassured, we intend to continue to muse in the coming year and we have several projects in the pipeline.

To all our readers, we say thank you for your confidence and friendship. May 2024 bring you all the very best of everything.