One Year Later

Celebrating the first anniversary of Cities in Ashes

Jul 23, 2024

*Firework Display at the Castel Sant' Angelo in Rome* by Joseph Wright

We did it!

365 days have gone by in a whirlwind and Cities in Ashes has lived to see its first year. In that time, our publication has amassed a collection of 25 articles and a cherished 396 subscribed readers from across the world.

Hats off to all of you!

Thank you for accompanying me on this journey and tolerating my ramblings on the most random, scattershot topics, from McDonald’s to the fall of empires. I know, I know, I was supposed to pick a specific niche or a theme long ago, but I’ve found that’s simply impossible! How could I possibly pick a single topic to obsess over? The world is a never-ending school, playground, and battlefield, with a thousand and ten things to discover and discuss every day. There’s just too much for me to choose.

So Cities in Ashes doesn’t have a niche like the fancy folk do, but it does have an underlying philosophy that I’ve ~~haphazardly~~ carefully molded since day one. In this amazing world, we face triumph and tragedy daily. We fight battles both within ourselves and against adversaries real and imagined. Our world is filled with suffering and pain, but it’s littered with beauty everywhere we look. Cities in Ashes is a publication dedicated to exploring the world for all its ups and downs, and how we can improve our lives for the betterment of ourselves and society. Each article delves into a different facet of our world and the lessons we can learn from them to build a more just and noble world.

I first started Cities in Ashes as a summer hobby, needing something to shake me out of a depression spell. Though I had little experience writing beyond grade school assignments and muddled short stories written as a young teen, I had a myriad of unspoken thoughts and opinions that I wanted to share with others, or at least archive for safekeeping. Since then, Cities in Ashes has become my beloved garden of ideas. It is a place where I am free to be optimistic and delicate in one breath, then critical and blunt in the next. I can put my mind on display here. I can present my love of the world in flowery words and winding paragraphs without fear of being deemed “too pretentious.”

As author of this publication, I strive to write each article with care to present valuable readings of the highest quality I can possibly manage. As I’ve stated before, so far I have published 25 articles. Though I am not as prolific as some of my Substackian peers, I am very pleased with the improvement in quality between my first and most recent articles. I hope to only continue this improvement moving forward.

Unfortunately, I do not have a clear roadmap for upcoming essays. (Part of the allure of creativity is the spontaneity that it offers.) However, I plan to write articles on mysticism, vitalist philosophy, scientific theories, and the like very soon. If you have any suggestions or topics you’d like to see discussed here, feel free to let me know.

Cities in Ashes

One Year Later

Celebrating the first anniversary of Cities in Ashes

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