Waymarks, 2011-2025

 

AFTERWORD

 

It has been fifteen years since I began writing Waymarks. Fifteen years is a long time, but it has passed by very quickly. Fifteen years is a good innings. Happily, writing this blog has led to some great connections having been made along the way. People have been very generous and unfailingly kind. I’ve tried to keep books as the common thread to all my essays here, which have also roamed through one or more of the other three main tenets upon which the blog was built, namely: history, travel, and museums. Examining art, archaeology, anthropology, geography, archives and exhibitions, with the occasional opinion piece, usually erupting in ignominious response to current affairs which have niggled me into noisily clattering my keyboard, thereby “sounding my barbaric yawp.” Apologies for those, especially if they weren’t your chosen cup of tea. On the whole though, I have been very fortunate in that my blog hasn’t attracted much in the way of ire from passing trolls or angry internet warriors with opposing agendas, hurrying by.

It takes a lot of time and effort to put together each blog post. In that sense, fifteen years is in fact quite a milestone. It has been heartening, though, to receive personal messages from people grateful for some of the information I’ve shared here. And, similarly, it has been disheartening to see some of the personal research which I’ve shared reused in other contexts without any credit. Most depressing of all though has been to see certain ‘travel bloggers’ repost my content whole on their own blogs – presumably appropriating my original writing in order to capitalise on the revenue generated by hosting adverts; something which I very deliberately chose not to do when starting out, and also one of the reasons why I chose to use the Blogger platform rather than the more popular Wordpress one, specifically because it could be ad free. However, it is immensely difficult to combat this and to get my appropriated content removed from these blog thieves. On this platform you can’t speak to anyone on the administrative ‘support’ side directly. You can only report each stolen blog post individually via an on-line form, and when you have over 200 posts pirated that’s an exhausting prospect, and if you do attempt it – which I did – it soon thinks you are a “bot” spamming the system. Life’s too short.

Consequently, after fifteen years, it is time to turn my attention to other things. I have several writing projects, both academic and non-academic, which I want to work on, such as collecting and re-editing some of the essays originally written for Waymarks into a proper book MS. So, while I am drawing a line here and signing off for now, I’m looking at this as a hiatus rather than a farewell. Waymarks may resume at some point, either here or perhaps on some other web forum (but this site will continue to be actively monitored and maintained by me personally). If you have been a regular reader or if you have only popped by occasionally, many thanks for doing so – I’m very glad you have, and I hope you found Waymarks of interest. – However, if by chance you are newly arrived here, there is plenty to find if you wish to leaf back through the archives. You can begin to explore by clicking on the subject labels listed below, or via those listed in the sidebar to the right (if viewing on a PC).

  

‘Waymarks’ – 2011-2025 – A blog about:

HISTORY | TRAVEL | MUSEUMS | BOOKS

And everything in-between