It’s been…interesting. Even more than usual, doing this annual review has reminded me of all sorts of things that I’d forgotten I’d written, which does reflect both my general mental state this year, and a degree of detachment from the blog that is probably healthy – I’ve managed, partly deliberately, to break the habit of obsessively checking the viewing statistics several times a week. Which is good, because otherwise I would regularly be getting upset as they continue their inexorable decline – worst performance since 2014! Where has everybody gone..?
This does also mean that I’ve written stuff only when I really had something to say, rather than hacking out a post for the sake of keeping the posting rate up – which probably hasn’t had much effect on the quality level, as the absence of throwaway filler is balanced out by the absence of those serendipitous moments when writing throwaway filler turns out to spark original ideas. Mostly, I just haven’t had the energy – or the time, as the lack of energy means I’ve had to use a lot of my commuting time, which is normally when I scribble this stuff, to try to keep up with regular teaching prep and the like. And let’s not think about how far behind I am with proper academic things I’m supposed to have written, or various minor side projects (the ancient Greek Call of Cthulhu scenario WILL see the light of day, but it has been stalled for months). I continue to believe that at some point the fog will lift, and in the meantime I am managing, more or less, to restrain the impulse to tackle the repressed panic by burning all my remaining energy.
January It’s déja vu all over again, again – and perhaps I should keep the posting rate up next year just by reposting old content with new dates, as it remains entirely relevant: in the face of renewed plague-related disruption, The Bare Necessities offered thoughts on online teaching and the idea of a ‘return to normality’ rather than rethinking our ideas about what is actually ‘essential’, while depressed reflections on the future of the discipline in Near The End are never untimely (also, a reminder that I still haven’t felt emotionally robust enough to watch the third series of Shtisel…).
February Well, this was a miserable, solipsistic month, wasn’t it? Clearly my mood was not lifted by having to complete data returns on a grant that meant I had to revisit the long-lost halcyon days of February 2020, let alone by getting dropped from a tv appearance. But we’ll always have the Handforth Parish Council meeting – which raised some serious issues about the workings of politics, local and otherwise (Village Green Preservation Society), as well as being entirely hilarious.
March By this point in the year, trying to run seminars online was really getting to me, and as so often my jazz composition class highlighted the reason why: the sheer awkwardness of any attempt at spontaneity or fun in a Teams meeting, so everyone has to be focused and serious, whereas every successful seminar needs to have the possibility of random derailment (Crazy Train). Interesting also to recall that this was the point where an apparently straightforward chapter assignment started to turn into a serious research project (Across the Barricades).
April One of the interesting things about this year’s posts is the relative absence of comment on UK politics, as being simply too depressing. A couple of minor exceptions this month, as the contrast between Thucydidean and Caesarean historiographies offered by the putative Museum of Brexit was too stupid to ignore (English Civil War (Remastered)), and I made an early attempt at associating B.Johnson with the ‘Tacitus Trap’, something that now looks quite prescient (for ‘clearly he was going to lose hs gloss sooner or later; actually it should have been sooner’ values of prescient; Rat Trap). Otherwise, discontent with the online was spilling over into conferences as well (Together in Electric Dreams).
May By this point in the year even the jazz composition was getting me down, and I came to the conclusion that, at least from my tutor’s point of view, I just simply be the musical equivalent of the student who simply insists that the military campaigns of Alexander the Great are the most interesting topic in the whole of ancient history (Oh! You Pretty Things). But it was at least time to unveil A History of Classical Greece from So Long to I Guess, Potami. Automatic captions, how much do I hate you..?
June Since this is supposed to be a vaguely upbeat, entertaining overview, we will pass hastily over my miserable but necessary acceptance of the total failure of any hoe at becoming an old-fashioned public intellectual, and instead focus on making fun of Peter Singer, who actually is one: Peter Singer’s Guide to the Classics was, understandably, my most-viewed post of the year, while How The Light Gets In was a more serious, if not entirely successful, attempt at drawing some wider lessons about the issues in relating ancient texts to contemporary problems.
July Reflections on the rush to abandon all plague restrictions, with a particular focus on the claim that British culture (unlike those slavish Asiatics) won’t accept such limits on freedom (Roots and Culture), and the psychological fall-out from a music class that focused too much for my liking on creative processes and what can block them (Crown of Creation) – look, this is supposed to be an escape from the day job…
August In the doldrums (a phrase that inevitably reminds me of The Phantom Tollbooth): preparing teaching, feeling disassociated from my own writing, getting very cross about the fetishisation of lectures… Maybe the last of those is still worth reading: Video Killed The Radio Star….
September This month, I shall mostly be having muddled thoughts about ‘culture wars’… It took me some time to remember what on earth I was doing with an apparent parody of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, before eventually realising that the title ‘On the Reclamation of History’ was a reference to the – barely three months later, completely forgotten – pile of twaddle produced by would-be lobby group Reclaiming History. But I was quite pleased with my attempted coining of the phrase Weaponised Parochialism…
October Work-life balance? Nothing in academia is ever as pressing as the need for the apple harvest to be pressed. Gone Fishing…
November Alarming flashbacks to my time in charge of an assessment and feedback review working group, with rumours that another UK university was out-sourcing feedback provision to a private contractor: The Horror, The Horror. Disconcerted by being head-hunted for a management position, so threw myself into the sort of pointless exploration of rabbit-holes that research is really all about… Only Human.
December One can hardly have a ‘pick of the month’ if there’s only one post – especially when it’s just a doom-laden response to rumours of strategic reviews and total institutional reorganisation, which will probably make next year’s blogging even more cheerful and optimistic…
Sphinx 
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