A friend wrote me with a breakdown of my recent posts. He informed me that in the past two weeks I’ve written almost nothing about the places I’ve visited. Instead, I’ve written, among other things, two posts about my hair, one post about the Hulk’s genitals, and one post about blogging.
Make that two posts about blogging.
None of this is news to me. I know perfectly well when I’m slipping into silliness and self-indulgence. What is news is that people are actually paying attention. Not entirely welcome news, I might add.
I might argue that a personal web site is by definition silly and self-indulgent. I might also argue that the popularity of the dullest blog in the world indicates that I should be striving for greater, not less, triviality.
But in answer to my friend’s query, no, I am not burning out. I am procrastinating. I have a daunting backlog of actual stories to relate, and so naturally I spend my time writing about British gap year students.
Now I’m stuck in Urumqi for four days waiting for a flight out. Perhaps I’ll finally get around to the corrupt school officials in western Sichuan, the Tibetan sky burial, the icy bike ride to Zoige, and my interrogation at the hands of the Kashgar police. Or maybe I’ll just log a few more entries about my hair.
Without further ado…
