This month marks entering my seventh year of writing online. That seems crazy, but also seems to have flown by. To mark the occasion, let’s first look back over the past year, then look ahead to the goals I have for this coming year.
I continue to believe in writing on the open web – and I think is the best choice for me at this time. I appreciate the value of hyperlinks; to continue the conversation where one essay ends, to “show your work” in developing your thinking in an essay, and to continue to weave the web together. As more and more writing and conversations moves behind closed and paywalled doors, I believe it is vital to keep a light on for those stumbling across Seneca’s writing, or newly introduced to Antigone. These places – the open, searchable web – allow these and other works to continue their lives as cultural touchstones. Where else are college students wandering into discussions of classical literature? There has to be a place to be introduced to these works and their value outside of classrooms and the Britannica website. No one is stumbling upon Kant’s revolutionary thinking on BookTok. This website is obviously not the only place online to do so, but I consider it important to contribute human, non-algorithmic writing to the cause. I continue to write with the idea of extending an invitation to everyone, especially the newer reader of classics.
This past year here was a bit bumpy – I did not hit my goals for publishing here. However, this is already changing. The one habit I have implemented over the past year which made a dramatic difference is a method of planning out each quarter and each month in detail, then writing out each week’s goals. From there, the weekly goals get broken down into daily lists. Reading The 12-Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Linnington was instrumental in helping me go from setting too many goals for too little time to scheduling my time more realistically, and successfully. I’ve been able to reliably finish the drafts I start, which is very much the point.
When I started this website, I thought finding ideas would be the difficult part. That is no longer the case. I have a folder with literally hundreds of essay ideas in it, full of sources, notes, and questions. Ideas continue to occur to me all the time. The more difficult aspect is rewriting, sticking with a stubborn draft to get the piece over the line. So far, I am seeing this year as the fruition of the past few years of trying and learning new things. It feels like I’ve acquired a sense of balance; unexpected, but I am enjoying it. As the adage goes, “A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than others”. However, I do feel more focused, more capable, and truly excited about what I have written this year and the things I am at work on. The infrastructure – the schedule, planning, and daily outlines – that I put in place late last year is the same infrastructure keeping me on pace this year. I think the main adjustment was matching the scope of my goals to the time I have. Attempting to do more than that was a disaster.
Looking ahead to this next year, I have a few goals. First, continue to not comment on the “hot topic” of the week, but delve into deeper humanitarian topics, like Beauty, Cognition, Arts, the Dignity of Work. I’m continuing to focus on European writers. I aim to write more essays involving historical research and more explorations of philosophical schools. I have a series upcoming, which I will announce shortly. Less cryptically (sorry!), I also have essays on Roget’s thesaurus, and a follow-up to my Dracula piece coming before summer begins.
Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash
