I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions –I’ve never been quite sure why this particular point of revolving around the sun should have special meaning for changing up something in one’s life — but I think I’ll actually make one anyway in regards to this blog. Over the past couple of years, the workload of being a teacher has expanded astronomically, not on the teaching side, but on the (usually pointless) paperwork side which generally has left me in a state in which mental fuzziness makes blogging improbable. To keep my sanity, I have been, of course, posting and reposting a pile of items on Twitter (@rogueclassicist) which would once have been put in this blog (e.g. BMCR reviews, links to news stories, etc.) and for the past few months have been trying to regularly incorporate them in blog form has they sort of give a snapshot of what’s going on in the Classical world on any given day. I’ve tried to keep up with This Day in Ancient History postings for the past while as well, adding some ‘value’ with additional dates pertaining to some of the ‘big names’ in our field from the past. The past couple of months have demonstrated that this is ‘doable’ with my current workload.
With all that, however, I am increasingly bothered that I haven’t been able to comment on many of the news items that are out there and, to paraphrase Juvenal, difficile est non bloggam scribere on a regular basis. And so, over the past couple of weeks or so I’ve sort of come up with a plan which will form the basis of my ‘resolution’. Basically it goes something like this:
- Most of the links etc. will continue to be posted on Twitter as they have for the past couple of years; the Repititiationes posts will continue in ‘next day’ format as they have for the past while
- This Day in Ancient History will continue to be posted on a daily basis
- Many news items — especially press releases — from the ‘source’ (i.e. a university press release, in most cases) will be posted whenever relevant and anything added by the popular press in their interpretations will be noted
- Some news items may be rewritten by me from time to time (a la the Daily Mail or Huffington Post), with full citations of sources etc.
- Whenever possible (and I want this to be the main thing), I am going to comment on the news coverage that is just plain silly … I used to do that a lot and I think it was a good thing for all concerned.
So that’s the resolution … we’ll see how well I can do with fulfilling it. Happy New Year y’all. We’re back.
rogueclassicism 