An important (and painful) lesson about the people closest to me and the things I write

One of my wife's friends told me yesterday that she reads this blog daily and feels like she has an oddly intimate relationship with me as a result.

Then she said that there have been times when she has told my wife that she loved something I wrote on my blog, only to discover that Elysha never read it.

Elysha acknowledged this to be true.  

Fear not, dear reader. Only a tiny part of me died at that moment. There's still plenty left of me for her to kill.

Later, while playing poker with friends and strangers, a guy sitting across the table (who I had just met) turned to my friend, pointed and me, and began whispering.

"What?" I asked, irritated. "What did I do?"

After a moment, he turned back to me, smiling, and said, "You're the Matthew Dicks? The writer? You wrote Something Missing? And the yellow book, too?"

"Yes," I said. "That's me."

It was a nice moment for me. It doesn't happen often. 

A moment later, a friend at the other end of the table chimed in:

"My kids actually read his books. I mean... I don't read them, but my kids do!"

Lesson of the day: 

The closer you are to me, the less likely you are to care about anything I have to say.

And I'm not going to lie. It hurts a little.

I may have to write mean things about my closest friends that they will never read.