20190116.0430

It has occurred to me that I am perhaps overly apt to bring up old pieces of writing I've done in this webspace, with the Skyward Sword piece I reference being perhaps the chief example. While I remain enough of a scholar to feel compelled to cite my sources (when I remember them; I do not write much in the way of formal essays here anymore, and keeping track of sources requires more apparatus than I usually put into play when I am typing into this webspace), I also know that harping on a single subject day after day does not do as much to endear me to readers as I might like to have happen. (You are few, O, readers, but beloved.) So if I keep bringing up old pieces of writing, if I continue to talk about the same topics, I run the risk of generating boredom--or more of such risk than had already been the case, since, as one erstwhile colleague put it, "reading is for suckers," and, as another I've known put it, "reading's for when you're old and wrinkly." And I know my readers are smooth-skinned and young, of course.
If I do tend to repeat myself, and I acknowledge I likely do, then it describes me as having a fairly consistent life. There is not necessarily anything wrong with such a life, to be sure; being able to be reasonably certain what I'll be doing next helps me to be able to do it well. Knowing it's coming, I can do something to prepare, and, being prepared, I can do a better job of things. But, yes, it is a bit of a rut, and I seem to wear it deeper with every pass, until the track that I have cut through the grass has become a ditch, perhaps a ravine or canyon--though that would assume far more power from my feet, and far more passes with them than I can claim to have made. And it is not without reason that I have been, not rebuked, but questioned about my general unwillingness to step outside the track I have worn for myself, the more so since matters are as they are with me. (Which is to say, reasonably good, though they could be better. But that last's true for most everybody.)
I am not complaining. I know better than to do so. But I am acknowledging that there is another area in which I might be said to need improvement. I have mentioned before (here and here, if not elsewhere, too) being like the pre-Bilbo Bagginses, and there are certainly in-milieu populations that would have seen them act otherwise (and did, else it'd be a different story), though there seems to be a broader expectation that they will continue to do as they are known to do. And I wonder if there is such an expectation of me, that I will do as I have done--and if there is, who has it, and am I in a position such that I can afford to disappoint them?