First, I want to make it clear that I’m not going to stop blogging about being a traditional polytheist, but I’m going to change how I do it a little bit.
First off, I’ll be closing Urban Hellenistos, as its own separate blog, in a few weeks. I’ll be moving some posts here and some posts to Hellenistai Project. Some posts I may duplicate or simply move to another blog I’ve started, The Odd Mod Out.
Hellenistai Project, while the focus will be on media reviews, I’m going to change the aim to something more like a “webzine” or “culture blog”, and while Kayleigh and Jessie are certainly welcome to keep writing for Hellenistai Project at their leisure, I invite a more relaxed approach and format. I also invite other writers and guest bloggers. I’m hoping to see articles about local groups, classical (pre-Christian Hellenic and/or Graeco-Roman and/or Ptolemic) influences in art, fashion, music, literature, film and theatre, and architecture spanning history, including the present —and I’m hoping to write a fair amount, myself. Interviews would be awesome, even just a video post of performances would be fine, every so often. Podcast ideas and video posts are welcome, as well. My vision is very “Vanity Fair for classical polytheists”.
See, I’ve never been very good at writing about my religion in the way that Sannion and Dver, or even Apuleius Platonicus does. The post-Socratic philosophers, who are by far the most popular, never really interested me all that much, and what I have to say about the pre-Socratics and such is very personal —which has always been my goal for Of Thespiae, to be a very personal thing. My goal for Urban Hellenistos has always been very non-personal; I was hoping it would be something that I could attract other people to write for with me in a few years or so of starting it, and that never happened. I was even hoping for an eventual “Rural Hellenistos” sister project that maybe I could guide, but would be the work completely of other people, but it would all be one big blog family and maybe even collectively publish an “Urban Hellenistai, Rural Hellenistai” Hellenismos 101 companion book —this, too, never happened, and I doubt it will any time this decade.
One thing I’ve always been pretty good at writing about, or so I’ve been led to believe by my past position as a chief writer and music editor for a short-lived Goth culture ‘zine, has been culture and its influences and effects on current life and fashion and literature and events. I’ve never had a degree in cultural studies, or psychology, or anything else that a lot of people look for — but I’m well-read and observant, fairly intuitive and good at analysing data for a critique.
I also work best with very relaxed structures, and ultimately, I think I gave myself too harsh a structure with Hellenistai Project as simply a “media review blog”, and while I was pretty good at sticking to a schedule for a while, I failed at it because sometimes I need to take a week or two off to de-stress from life and other times, and then I get embarrassed with myself because I couldn’t keep a schedule the whole time, regardless of how forgiving I know most people to generally be over personal crises —which then stresses me out more, and the cycle never ends, until I stop being stubborn about one thing or another. In short, I’ve noticed in the past that I’m often far more productive with things when my schedule and structure for projects is very relaxed —not to say I can’t work within deadlines and schedules when I have to, but it’s easier for me to do so with temporary projects, like community theatre, or a band tour, than it is with on-going projects. Something about me and monotony just never really got on too well.
I may come back later and re-invent Urban Hellenistos, but if so, it’s going to be a while —at least a couple of years.
