The "M-Word"

I've been in kind of a 'blog-slump lately and I think I know why.  One reason is something I've mentioned before and I don't know if talking about it made it better or worse.  I didn't set out to make this a popularity contest, but I guess this is kinda what it feels like to publish a book that doesn't sell a lot of copies.  It's buried the expectation that I would get to quit my job tomorrow and start being a millionaire because I'm such a phenomenal writer and everybody likes me (not to mention, I totally deserve it).

Another reason is that I've gotten less disciplined about writing intentionally and doing it as close to the start of my day as I can.  There's a poem by Kahlil Gibran that says "if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger."  I think the irony of it is that it probably feeds even less of the bread-baker's hunger.  I really do love writing and I hope to find a job that incorporates my ability to do it well, but it's hard to love something you just squeeze in at the last minute before you go to bed.

The big one, though, (and I just realized this today) is that, as a result of the previous two reasons, I've been trying to ignore the cathartic aspect of doing this in favor of something quicker and more appealing to a wider audience.  While I don't want to turn this into a repetitive emotional-baggage-dump, I'm not the kind of person who hides his feelings well.  Everybody around me seems to know if/when something is bothering me and there's a degree to which I think that my writing is no different.  Similar to turning up the radio so that you can't hear the clicking sound your car keeps making, I've tried to write off-topic and just ignore it until things get better, but that's not really how things work. 

The truth is that I'm a Mess.  And I really wish I wasn't and I don't want to be anymore, but when I think about what it would take to move from "Mess" to something better, something inside me just craters because my mistakes are too big and too numerous for me to even know where to start.  Besides, the idea of telling the truth and being exposed in that way is just scary.  I've worked really hard to craft a self-image that I think other people will like and admire and I don't want to jeopardize that.  I mean honestly, who would you rather be friends with: Pairsh the Art Major who used to work at a church or Pairsh the alcoholic who's addicted to pornography?