Snappy title here...when I think of one.

What follows is my own personal version of a pep talk. I have no idea why I have the insatiable urge to say this to myself in public, but I do. Just bear with me. What the hell, it's my blog after all...

I love being a martyr.

I don't mean it in the sense of getting myself blown up so I can enter Heaven faster. No, I like the psychological martyrdom, that allows me to crawl up on a Cross while not actually doing anything worthwhile with myself. Specifically, the kind of intellectual maneuvering that allows me to think I'm trying to achieve something, when in fact I'm hamstringing myself by setting up goals that are too lofty, or by making clearly ludicrous assumptions about how my background leaves me unsuitable to write.

Listen, if part of Tom Clancy's prep was selling insurance out of his garage -- and trust me, he did -- then surely as a former business writer I've got a shot too.

It's taken me 25 years, but I have finally managed to acknowledge that I am more frightened of success than failure. If I succeed at something, then I have to step up my game again, and work again, and risk failure again. Holy crap, I have to do it all over again!

But if I insist that everything I do means nothing, then I never risk my efforts actually meaning something. If I insist that I have no skills, then I never risk that I do have them and that I'm wasting them needlessly. Worse, this mindset allows me to ignore that as I practice doing things, I can actually get better at them. Hell, some things may even get easier!

Admittedly a lot of things won't, damn it.

But when I insist I can't do something, for whatever creative reason I cook up, I don't have to discover whether I am right or wrong. I can just martyr myself to my fear and stay cozy. Mmmmm...cozy.

I'm not too proud to admit that's a viable option. It really is. I can be just as good a person deciding not to pursue this as I will be if I do. Of course, I will be an unpublished person, and that's enough to make me think twice. I don't want to get to the end of my life and have my only accomplishments be changed diapers and a mean chicken enchilada (no, it's really mean -- I can't work out the heartburn thing yet). I just...I don't want discomfort and I don't want calcification. So something has to give and I think for today it's the refusing-to-fail thing.