Okay, I thought of a fourth reason why I'm reluctant to write: maybe no one will read it.  Of course that would take care of the first three reasons.  If I didn't think anyone was reading, and at this point no one is, I would feel freer to write something a little more intimate.  Or, not.......

I read an interesting article yesterday about failure and success.  It was along the same old theme of, "What hurts us makes us stronger" but applied to failure rather than emotional pain.  In my book, failure feels a lot like emotional pain.  I think I've lived a pretty charmed life and I fear I haven't had enough failure.  I guess my efforts to get my paintings in the public eye will test that theory.  The first time I entered the Mayor's Art Show, my painting was rejected.  Talk about emotional pain; I went into a total tailspin and started to doubt everything I thought about my abilities.  The fact that there were only 50 selected out of 450 entries had no effect whatsoever.  Of course that was remedied this year when mine was selected, but now I'm afraid to enter again.  Did my success come out of my failure?  Did it make me strive to do better work?  Would the memory of the rejection keep me from putting my work out there?  I guess time and effort will tell.