With the completion of Euthymius Zigabenus’ Commentary on the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians comes a bit of relief at finally emerging into the light that was just a faint ray in a very dark tunnel.

For the entire translation of Ephesians I lacked motivation for this project almost completely, and this has nothing to do with the content of this book of the New Testament. I just think that after 500+ days of working on this project as a whole without any planned breaks (I am not counting days that I was too busy or sick to work on it) has taken its toll somewhat. I still believe this work to be valuable and I still benefit from immersing myself in the text of St. Paul, but I find that almost every day I was saying to myself: “I would really like to be doing something else, and not just this.”

Time passes, and opportunities for new work and various endeavours come our way, and I like a bit of change here and there. It keeps me excited, and I must say that I lost some of the excitement that I had in the beginning of this undertaking.

There is something to be said about the success I have had in maintaining such a constant pace in the translation for so long, but my Translation Progress Report, especially on the second page where it shows the “Days Ahead of Schedule” chart, clearly shows a difference in my motivation between when I was translating 2nd Corinthians and when I was translating Ephesians. 2nd Corithians was marked by a furious pace that saw me get 40 days ahead of schedule by the time I finished it, whereas Ephesians is clearly flat throughout the whole process, where I did the bare minimum almost every day, and where I clearly had many days of zero output.

I hope that I regain some of that lost gusto. My brain is telling me that I probably won’t, but my heart is telling me to push bravely forward because this is a worthwhile thing, and I should not stop after having made it more than halfway through. Maybe the shorter length of Philippians (the shortest of the commentaries that I have started so far) will help push me along to see it completed. Time will tell.