Meta Stuff

Oh yeah, I have a blog, don’t I? As I recall, I typically write annual year-in-review posts so maybe I should do that. There hasn’t been much action on Everything is Oll Korrect! in 2019, especially in the latter half, due to school, work, and other commitments (which we’ll get to shortly), and for the last couple weeks illness. As I write, my eyes itch and I can’t breathe through my right nostril, but such is my dedication to the millions and millions of the Ocelot’s fans that I’m going to write at least this one post. I’ll run through the articles I did publish this year, then spend the bulk of this article talking about one of my favourite subjects, me.

Yes, there is wind left in my soul, though I am growing old. If you’re wondering about the lack of updates, it comes down to what I talked about last May. I’m working full time, going to grad school part-time, and through May had an internship at a local library, as well, and am still volunteering there once per week. Of course, I also have hobbies outside of blogging that I enjoy keeping up with.

Up until fairly recently, if someone had asked me what the best year of my life has been so far, my answer would probably have been my senior year of college. It was covered with an air of beautiful melancholy due my own aimlessness and non-starter romance, but though I felt I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas, it was mixed with friendships, opening new hobbies, and learning new things. There have been ups and downs since then but with little real progress until last year, and though my various projects are still in progress I’ve done enough in 2018 that I can say that, for the first time in years, I have a reasonable sense of optimism about my future. I’ll start this year-in-review by talking about Everything is Oll Korrect!, then end it with some personal notes.

What shall I render to the Lord, for all the things that he hath rendered to me? Things continue to improve here at Everything is Oll Korrect! This is the third year in a row that views have been up, and quality, if I may say so myself, has held up pretty well. I wrote forty-six posts this year, which is the most since 2012, when I had a weekly schedule. There’s also a major change up ahead for me personally, but we’ll get to that.

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by- wait, that’s a different story. Mine’s a little less exciting than that, I’m afraid.

I first heard of Xenophon and Anabasis while at college, in Bl. John Henry Newman’s great book The Idea of a University. In this particular essay, Newman gives an illustration of a poor applicant for university studies by giving a dialogue between a student and a tutor. This student does indeed stumble through the interview, able to give a basic summary of events in Anabasis but unable to answer questions about the etymology of the title and its significance, basic Greek grammar, and other such things. What struck me, though, was that Newman assumed that even a poor student will have read Anabasis, among other works from the Classical world, and have some basic knowledge of Greek and Latin. Indeed, in the printed essay, Newman does not even transliterate Greek words; he merely assumes that anyone reading would know the Greek alphabet.

The first really successful year for Everything is Oll Korrect! was back in 2012, and going into 2013 I had a lot of momentum built up with the weekly posting schedule and generally improving post quality. I had high hopes, but that year turned out to be the Agincourt of web logging (from the French perspective), and in 2014 it really came tumbling down. So even though 2015 was Everything’s best year, I was only cautiously optimistic about how 2016 would turn out.

A man is more likely to pursue his goals seriously if he makes a public commitment, and since some of my goals for this year concern this blog I thought I’d go ahead and offer this “preface” for 2016.

2014 was the year in which it all came tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down, and though I was somewhat optimistic that 2015 would be better, I assumed that the best days of this blog would remain in 2012.

Today, I’ve published a new project, On the Origin of Fire..., which will collect essays I’ve written that are either too long or off-topic for this blog. Yes, blog title aside, not quite everything is oll korrect for here.