Wednesday 16 October 2019

The Future of this Blog

First of all, sorry for not posting for such a long time! I actually planned so much for this year and also already for the next, but somehow I did not managed to write any of the planned posts. The reason for that is not only that I did not have enough time for writing, which I really did not have, but in fact there were three main reasons which kept me from writing:
  • I had changed the theme of this blog from World to European history, because I thought it would be easier. But it was not, as I now got a question which I still can not answer. What is European history? In the mean time I decided on three different definitions:
    1. The European history is the product of the histories of all European countries. (That is what I tried to create with the Index, but which instantly raises the question whether some events in one country are important enough for a "European history")
    2. The European history is formed by events and movements which had an impact on the complete continent. (This seemed to make more sense, but I am often not sure which things should be included then and which not.)
    3. The European history is everything that created the Europa of today and/or which might help to create a common European identity. (This is what I like the most, but I am still failing to find some good book which follows this idea without just excluding everything before the 19th century)
    As I am still working on that, I really do not want to invest time in things which I might need to remove later on when they might not fit anymore. Due to that some things I planned were already cancelled.
  • I had created the Index, because I wanted something to work off. The creation of this Index took some time, but still not enough time, as I often find new things that I want to include. Sometimes it is very easy to include them in what I already have, but sometimes one new thing opens a gate for many, many new things which can not be included easily. In fact the Index is very oriented on political and cultural history, as these are the things that interest me the most. Nonetheless I still think that there are many things that need to be included for a "complete" "European history" without being able to do that properly. This also leads directly to the last reason.
  • I really do not have enough time for everything and even worse I am also not interested in everything, not even in everything on the Index. But this unfortunately makes some/many of the posts short, badly constructed and sometimes maybe even (unplanned) biased. Which really does not do justice to some of history's great themes.
To cut a long story short, I decided that I do not want to keep working off the Index. I began this blog to have fun with history, but during the last year it merely became an obstacle in having that. In the future I will return to writing mainly shorter and deeper posts (like essays and tidbits) about themes that really interest me with the hope to make this blog more spontaneous, up-to-date and also interesting for readers. I am really sorry that I am once again doing a complete somersault, especially as the last one was not so long ago, but for the moment I prefer it that way. Still I also will keep the pile of fragments I created in the last years. This will also include the old Index, as I still think that it is actually a nice work result, but just not what it was supposed to be. Once again I can just say, Stay tuned and this time I really hope that there will be some nice things for you to read in the future.