Tuesday Tirade

Welcome to a new segment on Dogs Of Atlantis, which I have chosen to call "Tuesday Tirade". My regular readers will recognize that I have issues with regular posting on my blog, and this is my latest valiant attempt to trick my brain into thinking that posting to my blog regularly is a good idea for all concerned.

In all seriousness I know I need to post a LOT more often, (particularly when I have books to sell and such), but as I grow as a writer, I find myself spending more and more time on stuff that... well, to be blunt, will bring in some money. I love this blog. I really do. At 690 some-odd entries, it stands as the longest single work I have ever produced. (The Jake Price books are slowly catching up. I think that if I ever make it to a fourth book, they will have surpassed the blog for sheer word count) The problem with this blog is the same problem I have with a lot of things in my life of late...

When I post, I pour my heart and soul into it, and get almost nothing back.

There is something to be said for the catharsis of writing out my thoughts and ideas on a blank page for all those that stumble across my weary rantings to see. It can be therapeutic... while most would say that I desperately need to seek a social worker or other mental health professional to unload to, I've always had problems doing that. I hate opening up to strangers about stuff that doesn't concern them. It feels like I'm complaining about my life.

Which I don't need to, because my life is kinda awesome. I mean, sure I have the occasional financial crisis, the boys get in trouble in school, or the wife discovers some brand new form of pain in a part of her body that has scientists baffled, but that's life.  There are people out there that have it far worse than I do, with a far less adequate support system, and I feel a little guilty taking valuable couch space in a psychiatrists office when there are others out there far more deserving of the inscrutable nods and judgmental "hmms" of someone whose papers on the wall shout how superior they are to you.

Yes, I have issues with psychiatric professionals. No, not because one touched me inapproprately as a child.

I just can never shake the idea that I'm being judged somehow. When I post here, the internet won't judge me unless I post a picture of myself in a Sailor Moon costume (or something equally silly) and even then, it's an anonymous internet troll, not a flesh and blood human being. More often than not, the posts I make garner no attention or comments at all, and that is almost worse sometimes. At least with my books, I can convince myself that the people buying them are actually reading them. But silence of the internet can be far more discouraging to a writer than critisism.

And that's our Tirade for today, ladies and gentlemen. Please don't forget to tip your servers!