I had a nice long conversation with my good friend, Matt, the other night. We’re friends from back in high school and he was a groomsman in my wedding. We got to talking about our careers and made some parallels. Matt is in the film industry. He majored in Film at Emerson College, spent a few years in Los Angeles, and now lives in New York City. His lifestyle is such that he never has to apply for a job. Once you’re in the network, you are called upon to join other projects that are starting up. This year, Matt has not had more than two days off at a time, which can be exhausting given the long hours put into each filming project.

All of this work has been in the “production” category and my friend is now looking to jump into his “real career” of directing and writing. So when he takes a much deserved month-long vacation in South America at the end of this year, he will be doing some career soul searching and logistical planning. Now that he knows the production side of the business, he’s going to work on some of his own projects that he will write and direct himself… just short bits that he can use to show off to some companies that may hire him to work on commercials and music videos. Matt’s dream is not to direct music videos, by any means, but it is the next step in the journey. Someday, of course, he would like to do his own films.

“So, do you want to be the next Spielberg?” I asked him. “No. I don’t want to be ‘the next’ anybody.” Matt just wants to be himself and go at his own pace. He sees some people prematurely jumping ahead in their film careers in the NYC scene and he is not impressed. Matt tells me that there are so many people in charge of things that have no idea how film production works. If a person is too eager to jump ahead, they will get in over their heads. His dream is to get to the point where he can work on and promote projects that excite him. “And if that makes me ‘the next’ whatever, then so be it.”

The “jumping ahead” concept resonates with me. There are plenty of people within my own view that seem to be superficially “jumping ahead” in biblical studies. I have no real knowledge of this, I can only judge on appearances. The recent Biblioblogs interview with Peter Head reveals some interesting thoughts in this regard. In the interview, this distinguished textual critic calls “biblioblogging” a fad. He states,

Quickly expressed thoughts do not generally lead to wisdom. And the cultivation of wisdom is what intellectual work is all about. Blogs aren’t self-evidently therefore necessarily bad, just as it is not necessarily bad to give 100 seminarians an outlet for their half-baked ideas.

And continues, by pointing out the marketing aspect of blogs:

Another thing we need to recognise is that blogs are basically a marketing exercise — the blog enables marketing of the person behind it and/or their products. This can be overt (blogger advertises his own books and recommends them) or covert (blogger is seen to be clever or up-to-date), but seems to me to be basically universal.

Biblioblogging, such as I am attempting on kata ton biblon, is perhaps one of those routes used for “jumping ahead” of things. Peter (as he would like to be called) does not denounce biblical studies blogs out of hand so much as he puts them in their place. Indeed, if I’m honest, this is a place for my own half-baked seminarian ideas and it is even a place for me to do some covert marketing of my image. These are not bad things per se, but I don’t want them to consume me. Both talking with Matt, and reading Peter Head’s interview, have reminded me that I should slow down a bit and not worry too much about getting ahead. While some bibliobloggers are doing series on single Greek words in the New Testament, pumping out several detailed blogging posts per week, I have to recognize that that’s not me.

I do want to discuss ideas that interest me on this thing, but I’m more concerned with foundational issues. Right now, I’m interesting in documenting my own journey and what it means to try to become a scholar. If I jump ahead of things and try to be some world class blogging exegete right now, then I will be missing out on some necessary building blocks to my intellectual integrity and character. It is these building blocks that I hope to explore with more depth on this page. In terms of Matt’s career, I am still in the learning-how-production-works phase. And that’s okay.