A million years ago around a campfire, I watched grandpa try to tell my child his favorite story. It wasn't going smoothly as he would like. I lovingly watched him persist. At some point he sighed and met my sympathetic gaze. It was time to kick embers and turn in.
Maybe it’s the pacing of the article that’s off. Feels like it’s wasting one’s time with self-indulgent prose.
The short story in your comment, OTOH, is very much better. I can see the scene, my mind has filled in some details, and it took only a couple seconds to read.
I think pacing is more aptly the issue than narrative. Perhaps even more specifically, the load-bearing first couple sentences dive right into establishing a complex setting before any other context is established. Even as I may enjoy narrative, I rarely enjoy effortful fumbling around in the dark unless it's with Joseph Conrad or Vladimir Nabokov.
