Documents in Archives

[merrimacga]

One of the problems I have noticed, and surely everyone else here has as well (it would be really difficult not to), with VM research is the tendency to go down the proverbial rabbit hole. It will certainly be an interesting journey but one can lose sight of their original purpose along the way as well as forget where they found items of specific and relevant interest to that purpose. Having and maintaining a strong focus is key to any line of research as is documenting everything well so you can easily and quickly reference back to any particular part of it as needed. And yet we are so easily distracted so much of the time. Such distractions are often worth us documenting separately in some way so we can come back to them later, so long as they don't derail us from our focus and purpose of the moment. With everything, there are pros and cons. Ultimately, the more manuscripts and other potentially relevant data to VM research that there is known, accessible and even digitized will benefit VM research but sifting through all of that with single-minded purpose will certainly be a challenge. Not to mention that all the breadcrumbs we leave for ourselves on our trail, both the one for our current purpose and the distractions worth coming back to later, we risk circling back on eventually again and again and again. This has happened so often on this site. It isn't just the danger of rehashing, which is not always a bad thing, whether it be our own efforts or those of others. It is also the risk and actuality of finding that gem of a needle in the proverbial haystack and then losing it and having to search for it again. We may find it again or it may be lost to us forever. Or our minds may play tricks on us and we may think we found that gem and lost it when we may never really have found it at all.

Regardless of how it turns out, it will still be an interesting trip down the rabbit hole. Anything and everything we learn from the effort will still have merit and enrich us, even if we don't achieve the original intended goal and no matter how often or how much we lose our way.