Guilty as charged

I believe that I am guilty of not following one of my own rules of engagement, namely the one about not messing about because it gets you no-where. Indeed I think that I have spent a lot of the last year "messing about" and not being terribly serious about what I was writing. I was, I think, pretending that I was trying to be a writer, going through the motions as it were. They say that confession is good for the soul - so there you go. I confess I am guilty as charged - it's a fair cop. but the good thing about realising what I have been doing means that I get a chance to do something about it. I know that I said a couple of weeks ago that I was thinking of writing short fiction again but as yet I have done nothing about it. But that changes this afternoon. I start getting serious again this afternoon. It is in fact already afternoon. It's not like I'm putting it off for a couple of hours.
On a different yet similar note. I had a conversation with the dog this morning about BTL. I explained to him about how I loved it and I thought that other people would too - if only they got the chance to read it. I also told him that in this current economic climate publishing houses were taking on fewer and fewer new writers because it involved quite a big risk with their somewhat limited financial resources. He was of course absolutely riveted by this conversation and was hanging onto my every word. So then I asked him for his opinion on self publishing which is something that I said that I would never do. I mean, people are supposed to pay you to publish your work. Anyway, he didn't really have an opinion and chose that moment to fall asleep. So I wondered what you all thought. Is it something that you have considered or even tried and what were your experiences? Is it something that I should consider?
Anyway, serious head going back on now.