Meditation: "Authentic"

I don't find monasticism that compelling, but I guess sometimes it is necessary. I suppose I need to figure things out for myself, because I'm a little lost.
What are we trying for, here?  To be a real person, doing real things?
Last week I had this conversation, and everything lit up, "And show her what she's won . . ." -game show Technicolor blinking illumination.  I felt like a fraud.  It was the first time in a very long time.
I try to be "authentic" as in, accurate in the representation of the facts.  It isn't even hard for me.  I am honest to a stupid degree.  I share too much.
But last week, this conversation has lingered for me.  The person I talked to seemed to think I had a very high level of dissatisfaction with my life. Also, that I wasn't doing my work in the best possible way.  Maybe even, that I hinder my own progress.  Maybe even, inauthentic.
Really?
I was mad for a few days.
Then thought about it more.
Then a little more.
I know how I feel about my creative pursuits, and my life to that end.  I know what I put into it.  The outward expression of that has to be real.  Maybe the disappointments I have had on this quite long road of trying to be better at what I do have made me seem, I don't know, less exuberant about the prospects.  Who knows?
All I know is I try.  I try and try and keep trying.
Then I got this idea - what if I stripped away everything in my life that wasn't part of the process of my creative life?  What if I subtracted everything?  What if I committed myself fully, completely to my work until the end of 2010?  What if I worked every second of the day that I wasn't working my day job?  What if I secluded myself, took away all distractions, rejected purposefully the dominant culture all around me?
What if I didn't go into a store from now until the end of the year?  What if I didn't buy anything except the gas to get me back and forth to work?  What if I instead of worrying about turkey and gravy and Christmas lights I kept myself on the path?
What if I didn't really drink? Or dance?  What if I didn't worry about anything or anybody extraneous?
I can do these things, you know.
I made a list of all the supplies I need to take me into the New Year.  I thought about being the change I seek.  I thought about being myself.  I thought about being real.  
What is my aim?  I know that.  To craft work that resonates, that provokes, and that endures.  That's what I am trying to do.
For the foreseeable future, everything I do will be for that purpose.  Nothing else.  The well lit moment of seeing myself as somebody else did, as a person that sabotaged, that was more talk than action - it disgusted me.
And from this point on, unless it is for reasons of development, I am not talking about what I do, I'm not making a point of conversation.
I'm making myself into a kind of monk.  I'm taking a vow of silence.  This will be my forum to explore the process, and to see myself change.
From now forward, the work and the living are inseparable. The work isn't a python that is squeezing me.  It isn't the weight of gravity pressing into me.  It is now my bones, my skeleton.  It is holding this whole pile of flesh up, and goddammit, that's that.    
Slipping on the robes.