The issue with this blog (or why I couldn't bring myself to write)

Excuses
Neglect: 1. to give little attention or respect to | 2. to leave undone or unattended to especially through carelessness

Origin and etymology of neglect: Latin neglectus, past participle of neglegere, neclegere, from nec- not (akin to ne- not) + legere" to gather

Neglegere (other variations negligere, neclegere): 1. not trouble one's self about | 2. to disregard, dispise|

I think you get the gist of what I am trying to say with all these definitions (English from Merriam-Webster dictionary, Latin from Lewis & Short). To put it in words, I have been neglecting this blog for quite some time now. Finally, I managed to write these words down on paper (uh, on the server; the rest of this post contains "writing" for "typing words into MS Word"). Acceptance is the first step to recovery, right? Nevertheless, I am still not off the hook and I should explain why I disappeared after the very beginning of this blog
for quite some time now. Finally, I managed to write these words down on paper (uh, on the server; the rest of this post contains "writing" for "typing words into MS Word"). Acceptance is the first step to recovery, right? Nevertheless, I am still not off the hook and I should explain why I disappeared after the very beginning of this blog

Reasons
To begin with, I made this blog during the summer of 2016, on the day before I was about to leave for my holiday to France and while I was being bothered by gnats. How unstructured and unplanned do you want to start a blog! Despite these unfavourable circumstances, my intentions behind the blog were sincere: I really wanted to improve my writing and discuss all the wonderful new things I would encounter during my Master's programme.

Those two wishes of mine may have been granted but not in ways I had (or could) foresee. I have improved my writing, not by writing blog posts, but by failing many assignments and the demand to rewrite them in order to pass my courses. I have encountered wonderful new things, especially theories and methodologies that encompass literary research. However, the things that interested me the most (Greek and Latin literature, linguistics, epigraphy and other disciplines) were fading towards the background during the year, until I came to the point where I was wishing for some Greek or Latin text just for fun.


As you can read, I did not feel to be in a position where I could work on a blog in addition to all my regular duties for my study programme. Either I was myself puzzling over new theories and methodologies, which were not the easiest to grasp, or I was not in the mood to tackle another piece of writing because I had written lots of assignments, essays or translations.


Another big issue was the severity with which I approached this project of a "blog". Although I wrote my first post as an outlet for upcoming ideas, I envisioned for my next post to become a qualitative masterpiece, preferably funny and relatable to my first one. By having these unrealistic expectations, I made it impossible for myself to write something new at all.


Future
What has changed? Why am I still writing this post after a year of being non-active? There are two main reasons why I will not give up on this blog:

1. Being publicly engaged has become more and more important for a researcher nowadays. While I am still a student, I would like to have an early start and writing will make further writing only easier. Besides, I have hopefully learned from this enormous gap and shall try to develop a habit of writing daily.

2. Most of my fellow students have gone off to somewhere abroad and some are keeping us up to date by blogging their experiences. Their blogs inspired me to write along with them, even though I am not going abroad this year (which will be a short topic for another day)

In short, I am back and will now stay (maybe you have noticed that "as an experiment" has been removed from my heading). I shall focus primarily on my thesis since this can be a topic on which I can elaborate and with which I will be busy for the rest of this academic year. Yet, this blog is called "Kevin's Classics", so the topics can range from anything about antiquity to anything that catches my interest, and sometimes these subjects overlap.

Don't worry when you feel that this particular post is quite long. I will not have the time to make a long post like this one every day. My goal is to write one long post every week and fill other days with smaller stories, opinions or random thoughts. I hope you will tune in again!

meum Libellum vivat, crescat, floreat!