I’m a bad person.

More specifically, I’m a bad blogger. I would blame all of you for being bad enforcers, except that I’ve been writing about entrepreneurship at work, and you can only read so many “take responsibility!” and “go out and achieve your dreams!”  blog entries on inspirational websites before you start feeling like all your failures are your own fault. Which they are. But it’s nice to put the blame somewhere else, ain’t it?

Keeping this in mind, I offer no excuses for my contemptible behavior, except to say that it’s hard to keep up with things when your entire life schedule changes suddenly and dramatically. Translation: I got the writing job. I now write random articles 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. It can be a little bit exhausting, and it probably comes as no surprise that when you spend all day sitting in front of a computer writing, the prospect of sitting in front of a computer writing in your free time is less than ideal. But that could probably classify as an excuse, and I’m trying to avoid those.

So let’s focus on the positives: I’m writing an entry! Yay!

After nearly a month and a half of writing almost nothing creative, I’m at it again, and (trying to be) more serious than ever. The latest developments are thus:

• thanks to the ever-magniloquent Emily, I now spend my Wednesday afternoons and evenings holed up in assorted cafes, which has slowly but surely convinced me that I do, in fact, want to spend my spare time in front of a computer typing.
• at the suggestion of my disgustingly prolific and sanguine friend Aran, I’ve discovered the website duotropes.com, which I highly recommend. Due to this discovery, and the fact that all the 18-year-old entrepreneurs I’ve been writing about are more successful than me and it’s just not fair, I’ve decided to start submitting short fiction. My first target is Asimov’s Science Fiction Journal. Go big or go home, right?
• I’m considering starting an online writing group, of all the lovely writerly types I’ve collected over the years who don’t know each other but really should. So far the plan is pretty vague, but it includes monthly or bi-monthly prompts/inspirational links, and free access to each others’ brains. If you are a word person (and I know most of you are), tell me what you think of the idea. Also, tell me what your friends would think of the idea, because the more people I can get in on this, the better it will be as a resource. Also, name suggestions.
• Bottom of the Garden is still very much in the works, albeit on a much slower pace. Rather than writing a chapter a week like I promised I would, I’ve written about 5 pages in the last three weeks. But it’s better than nothing, and thus I am able to sleep at night. Which brings me to….
• self-punishment will have to be my route here, since apparently you’re all too nice to inflict one on me. I promised you terrible adolescent poetry, but somehow I don’t think that punishment is severe enough for my crime. So, without further ado, I present to you my deviantart account I started in middle school. It might not look so bad on the surface, because I have successfully buried most of the crap under a plethora of pictures from Australia, but keep digging. You will find them.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s turn to the most important topic: the future of this blog.

Don’t worry! I’m not discontinuing it, but I am changing my MO; I need to set a schedule that fits with my (semi-adultish) new routine, which makes Monday and Friday posts rather difficult. Bi-weekly postings are fine, but I think part of the reason I’ve failed so spectacularly over the past several weeks is because I set absurd rules, and then when I didn’t (read: couldn’t) meet them, the ensuing guilt meant that I didn’t want to post the next time around, and it all went down the toilet from there. So! New plan:

• I post at least once a week, preferably twice, and as many times as I’d like after that.
• Every post must have something to do with creativity. This may be just telling a story in a creative way, or it may be an update on my current projects, or it may be just a funny picture I drew or something I’ve been thinking about.
• I will update on the status of my projects when they are relevant, never going more than two posts without mentioning at least one of them.
• The random fiction will stop. For now I’m leaving it up, but it may come down. Undecided on this point thus far.

What do you say, friends? Do you trust me?

Bashfully yours,
M.M. Jordahl

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” -Winston Churchill

P.S. I drank 5 hour energy for the first time today, because they were giving it out for free at my office. It was a bad idea. Don’t do that, or you’ll end up all hoppity and twitchy like me.