Warning: this post wallows in shameless and tedious introspection, with a dollop of malice near the end.

Colby Cosh tells us how much he misses manual typewriters. I don’t even miss the electric ones. If word-processors had never been invented, I would never have written anything substantial. I tend to be hopelessly obsessive about revising my work, not to mention a fairly inept typist, and could never finish anything of any size.

Since word processors were invented, I’ve published about four dozen articles on classical literature, mostly short and fairly technical. They average around 3 ½ pages as published, include lots of untranslated Latin and Greek, and are mostly on narrowly-defined topics -- strictly for specialists, in other words. Most took years to finish, and I’ve got dozens more in process at any one time, plus several ideas for possible books, none of which is anywhere near finishing. Of course ‘in process’ can mean a two-sentence summary of an idea that would take two or twenty or two hundred pages to defend properly.

Anyway, I had been word-processing for quite a few years and was on my third computer (of four so far) when I first noticed that Microsoft Word has a ‘Properties – Statistics’ function which calculates a ‘Revision number’ and a ‘Total editing time’. This would have been around 1995 or 1996. In my usual desultory way, I had been working on an article on a couple of passages of Seneca off and on for the previous couple of years. I was still shocked when I saw the counts: I had spent just over 1000 minutes (16+ hours) on a 2000-word paper, which is not too bad, but was already up to revision 146. I tend to open a file, change a few words, then close it, open it the next day, and change some of them back. By the time this particular paper was refereed and revised for publication it was up to version 154.

Of course, my main reason for blogging is that I have plenty to say on various topics, and was sick and tired of wasting time polishing up letters to editors that are then ignored or butchered. However, I also started blogging to try to develop fluency and good (every-day) writing habits, with the idea that it might help in finishing some longer scholarly articles, perhaps even a book or two one of these years. It's somehow easier to let go of something if I know I can always go back and change it later, and the fact that Google will preserved copies of the unedited version somehow doesn't seem to damage my self-confidence.

So how am I doing so far, after just over a year of blogging, and just under a year of really prolific blogging?

There have been quite a few accomplishments:

1. I’ve web-published around 175,000 words -- enough for a good-sized book, if they had all been on one topic.
2. I’ve attracted plenty of visitors, and many keep coming back. Christmas has affected the counts, but before then I was getting around 1000 unique visitors on weekdays, 700 on weekends, up from 700 and 400 just a couple of months before.
3. I’ve gotten lots of links from other blogs, enough to put me into the Top 100 on the Blogstreet and (usually) Myelin lists. I’m currently in a three-way tie for 71st place out of 43,202 blogs on Blogstreet, and a two-way tie for 98th place out of 16,132 blogs on Myelin, though I spent much of the last six weeks or so in the 100-110 range.
4. More important, I’ve made a lot of friends, and met quite a few of them. I’ve also made some enemies, but so far only the kind of enemies any decent person would be proud to have made.
5. I suppose I’ve amused or instructed a fair number of people, and I hope I've also succeeded in shaming some people who deserve to be shamed.

Perhaps I'm just feeling negative, but these accomplishments (for which I am very grateful) are balanced by various disappointments:

1. I'm spending huge amounts of time on-line, and my studies are suffering: I haven't even finished Trollope's The Way We Live Now, begun several months ago, and dozens of other books are glaring at me from their shelves, demanding attention.
2. I have a huge backlog of things I would have liked to blog about, but haven't found time for. Fluency is only relative, and I still have more in mind than I can put on paper or on screen. Not to mention that blogging cuts into time available for other work: my other writing has languished since I started blogging.
3. I have yet to write anything that I've been totally satisfied with, and quite a few topics really demand to be revisited. I might even be able to sell an article or two to a print journal if I can find the time to polish it up.
4. My anonymity (previously explained here) is a burden, though it seems unavoidable. If I put my real name on this blog, some of my more computer-literate middle school students would likely find it. Ruminations on clitorises and the etymology of syphilis would probably not go over very well with their parents. If anyone really wants to know my name, they can do a 'whois' on the domain, or just click here. (As long as my real name is not actually printed on this blog, I should be safe from Googling students.) Note that one small reason for anonymity is to avoid confusion with the proprietor of Cold Fury, who has nearly the same name.

The result of all this is general discontent or at least restlessness. I have no intention of shutting down this blog, but I have been considering possible new directions. Possible additions for this blog or a 'spinoff' blog:

1. More thoughts on education. The Cranky Professor has asked for them (on his blogroll). Of course, it's difficult to be specific about educational problems without at least some risk to my day job: one more reason to stay anonymous.
2. Classical quotation of the day. Or classical joke of the day, though it's hard to come up with 365 that are even close to funny.
3. ‘Ask Dr. Weevil’. I’ve always wanted to be a sophist, and it might be fun to offer to answer any question on ancient life and literature, track quotations, correct bad Latin, and so on. I already do a certain amount of that. It would probably be quite time-consuming, and would also likely attract lazy students who want someone to do their homework for them. On the other hand, I could put in a tip jar, and possibly even attract significant tips.
4. A more organized exploration of the interesting byways of the ancient world: Pliny's letters on the eruption of Vesuvius and the treatment of Christians (in one word: torture), evidence for the use of hard liquor in the ancient world, and so on. In other words, longer essays on classical topics of interest to the non-classicist.
5. A separate literary criticism blog might be fun, like The Brothers Judd but more thematic. I've toyed with the idea of offering a weekly reading assignment, followed by specific questions in the form of posts. Discussion would then take place in the comments themselves. Possible topics would be Saki short stories like this one or the works of Caesar (in English).
6. One particular topic gives me a guilty feeling of omission. Way back on May 12th I proposed a Chomsky blog, devoted to keeping an eye on the evil old bastard. I've been too busy to start such an Index Chomskianus, and it would take a great deal of work, as well as attracting a lot of annoyingly nasty and often (like their master) long-winded Gnoams. Perhaps it could be a joint effort.
   
   For one small example of what I mean, my original post has attracted two relatively recent comments from someone in Australia named Adrian Vogt. On November 20th he wrote:
   
   "A man who arouses so much stupid hatred and venom among you yanks must be worth his salt. My next book purchase will be a volume of Chomsky. Tell me which one you would prefer to see burned."
   
   How does he know our hatred and venom are stupid if he hasn't read any of the books we hate so venomously? It certainly looks as if it's our being "yanks" that makes us so stupid and hateful. On December 16th Vogt was back with a second comment:
   
   "Nobody wanted to advise me on the Chomsky book that s/he wanted to see burned first.Perhaps none of those guys who seem to be foaming at the mouth at the mere mentioning of his name ever read a book by him.I wouldn't be surprised.Dr.Johnson once said:'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel'. I would like to add to that : 'and of an illiterate'."
   
   Of course, Mr. Vogt would look more literate himself if he put spaces between his sentences. He shares the common fantasy that Chomsky's books are so convincing that no one could read them without being utterly convinced, and therefore his enemies must not have read them. And he's apparently too stupid to know that when you comment on a six-month-old post you're lucky if even the site-owner notices: I doubt that anyone else has seen his comments until now. Feel free to advise him on his quest.

As always, only more so, suggestions are welcome.