I arrived in Scotland one year ago yesterday—exhausted, excited, and emotionally drained after leaving my entire life behind me. I’d left behind the organization I co-founded with a friend. I’d left behind a relationship of over a decade. I’d left my parents behind at the airport. I’d left behind my family, my country, and everything that felt safe, for a complete unknown. A family friend picked me up at the airport (a beacon of security in an extremely unsure world) and dropped me off in my room, and I was immediately adrift.

In the year to come, of course, my home country would rapidly destabilize, my new country would do its best to follow suit, and a global pandemic would shake the human population as a whole to its core. Somehow, impossibly, this has still been one of the best years of my life.

The (Not Really Con)Lang Blog: Aristophanes and Other Challenges

I’ve run into a weird problem with my dissertation.

The novella of my dissertation is set in Classical Athens, just after the end of the Peloponnesian War. It’s alt-history with a number of steampunk elements, which means it’s got enough speculative elements that I can gloss over a few historical inaccuracies. I’d just rather not, if I can help it.

The Conlang BlogAlex PenlandAugust 10, 2020conlang, language, classics, dissertation, slice of lifeComment

The Journal: Commonplace Books

As a kid, I took all my notes in my diary: I always had it on me, it was a journal I loved, and I always knew where to find my school notes, my maps, my keys to secret languages… Everything I scribbled down.

At the beginning of term last year, a friend of mine mentioned she was going to try and write in a single notebook for the duration of the program, and I decided to return to my roots.

I’m glad I did, because the pandemic hit in the second term.