Bad at Blogging

I’m really very bad at blogging and I hate doing it. I read the blogs of other writers and am always amazed at their insight and wisdom and way with words and I wonder if I am not striving for the entirely wrong set of goals. Then I reach a milestone, like finishing the first draft of my novel, and remember that we all have to die someday, might as well suffer during our time on Earth.

I am making the submission rounds with two stories currently, and just finished the second draft of my third. I’ve also unexpectedly returned to poetry, which is weird and scary and other things… In what feels like a previous life, I had some small success with poetry, but it was never as fulfilling to me as writing a narrative (which I am apparently not very good at). Every time a poem of mine is published or performed somewhere I feel a tinge of guilty frustration that I can’t be one of the cool kids telling stories to the masses.

I am currently in the middle of picking up and moving out of Utah and back to the Midwest. I had hoped to write a beautiful and interesting entry about my time in Utah, but I am currently at a loss. It is good to be going home. From there, I will be searching for a job to support myself and going through another major life upheaval. So it goes.

Like most posts, this blog entry is going nowhere. Just thought I would update. My biggest triumph this past week was starting the #NeverFinishAStory tag and truly blowing apart the world of traditional publishing. Best of luck in your own endeavors, thanks for reading. I hope it enriched your sense of self worth with the knowledge you’re better at blogging than I am.

Here are some photos I took when visiting 圆明园 (Yuan Ming Yuan) back in 2012, since I have nothing left to say. To English speakers, it is called the “Old Summer Palace.” This is not a translation of the name. Literally, it means something like “Round Bright Garden,” though it is usually translated into something more eloquent in English. It is located outside of Beijing and called the Imperial Gardens during the lifetime of the Emperors that built it, Kangxi and Qianlong.

It was built in a French Rococo style to provide an exotic location for the Emperors’ court to visit. There is some controversy over who exactly destroyed what in the palace, but French and English troops were definitely involved.

Looking back on the photos now, I wish I had focused more on the architecture and beautifully toppled facades.

-J.M.