If I'm going to do this, I've got to get serious.

Or perhaps serious isn't the right word, because serious isn't enough. I've been going about writing like it's some kind of hobby, or a once in a while weekend gig that I can just blow off and play video games.

And as long as that's how I feel about it, how I treat it, that's all it's going to be. I can't just get serious about it; I've got to treat it like it's the only thing I've got. If I'm going to be successful.

But I have other responsibilities, tons of them. But really not that many. I mean, I've got a family I neglect already, might as well neglect them by writing. It's not like I have a job. I'm the support person in my family.

I have a personal blog in which to complain about all that, though. This blog is about reading and writing. I'm on page 122 of 477 of The Darker Road, and I write every day but it's all in my personal blog, no stories or good stuff.

I need to get into the habit of writing. This is just like I've said on my other blog, habits. I can sacrifice lots of stuff and write, and still be able to enjoy my family.

Do I have goals for this week? Keep blogging in my other blog the way I've been, keep reading every day. Experiment with reading/writing habits. Write the stuff I don't want to write. Push. Obsess, not in a pedantic way, but in a passionate, creative, flamboyantly insane way. Throw sword, attack with scabbard and lunchbox. 

Treat writing like it's all I have, because it is, and I can't let it get away. I hate to admit that in public because I feel like I'm betraying everyone who loves me. But it's all I have that's mine only. And I don't mean that in a jealous way, like nobody else is allowed to write. Just that of all of the things I have that define me, writing was first, and only and wholly mine. Nobody else told me to write, or that I should be a writer. Well, they have, but that was after I had already decided it was for me.

And if I let it get away it's like I never lived. I mean, I have my lovely children and all the people I ever talked to, and that's great, but none of that is just me, my own, at my core. It's what I've shared with others, what others have influenced me to do. Writing is the only thing that originated 100% from within myself.

I can't let it get away. I've got to hold on to it, lift it above the fires of Mount Doom for as long as I have fingers, as long as a single thought remains in the tattered remnants of my brain. Write.