on not disappointing myself

I pushed myself to continue writing it, even though I strongly disapproved of what I was producing.

But I had also succumbed to the self-destructive illusion of believing that the next creative project would be the one that would bring me the recognition I’d been hungering for all my life. The big break would finally arrive, the brass ring would at last be within my reach, or my ship would come in.

The pursuit of blogging—and the career, success, and fame I thought would follow—had poisoned my relationship with writing. The promise of getting published and pulling in the big bucks distracted me from my true purpose: doing the real work. The work of writing. I was finding clever and convenient ways to avoid writing. I updated my website. I cre

I knew that conventional success would depend upon three factors—talent, luck, and discipline—and I knew that two of those three things would never be under my control.