Joseph–That’s a good point too. I think the fear of failure would include the fear of leaving something on the table, of not getting everything you could have gotten. And thanks for noticing, I try to respond to everything I can. Keeps you sharper and forces you to elaborate on the ideas from the post which I like and need. It’s also a large section in a big PR doc I’ve been working on for the Rudius authors–if you aren’t going to bother contributing to a community based around you, why should anyone else?

The people who tell me to take it easy, that I take things too seriously, or that I should relax, smoke a joint or whatever – they are ALWAYS the type of people you describe, 35 year old assistants and the like. They can be cool people, but they don’t understand the fire because they never stoked it.

An aside: I’ve been catching up on your posts, reading the archives. I never used to actively look for comments on your posts until I began to see that you participated in the discussion. I’d just like to validate your post about good internet PR by a woman with her blog, and how she would email readers and such. I only really post here with the hope of engaging the writer of the work, or validating them for a good peice (knowing that they read their comments). A validation point and a comment on the RMMB was all it took to make me a devoted fan of some already great work.