One of my insecurities: in school, I got reasonably good at technical writing, but never felt comfortable with (actively avoided) talking about art. Blogging about games has helped me get over that, and in particular the discipline of writing about every game of any length that I play has made a big difference.

I used to read a lot more than I now play games, and I still read a decent amount. So: should I adopt the same discipline with books? Somehow, though, reading books still doesn't put my brain in the same analytical frame of mind, and I'm not comfortable writing in a more impressionistic mode.

And the books that I read can have their own problems, raise issues that I'm less comfortable discussing in public. The Mad Man was the most recent dramatic example of that: it's a glorious, glorious book, life-affirming in its own way, but it's also a book that discusses experiences/activities that I'm not comfortable talking about the idea of in public, even in the abstract. It's rather sad that games so rarely raise such concerns. (Catherine being the most notable exception that I can think of.)