The longer you work, I think the more possibilities you have of creating something.  At least in my case, it doesn’t come through divine touch, it just comes through just work.

– Arturo Herrera

For a lot of my life, work was home base.  Homework and then working for a living.  And then there was the work of making.  I have always felt most myself and safest when I retreat to work.

But I have lost some of that.  I work enough – and people are always telling me how surprised they are how much quilting I get done.  And I am busy at work.

Work is not home base anymore though.  I feel my brain is distracted.  It is hard for me to accomplish.  Part of that is the unavoidable complexity of life.  But part of that is the noise I create with dumb TV and dumb smartphone.

My husband has the beautiful little reading nook upstairs.  It is quiet.  It is peaceful.  It reminds me of my great grandmother’s apartment.  Bright, quiet, and invitation to play or think or read.  I want to create that same space for quiet in my brain and in my home.

I seem to need to recommit to this daily.  It no longer comes naturally or easily.  It may be too late for me to rewire.  All I can do is try.  I know, dear reader, you can’t stomach me committing one more time to work and focus.  Yet, it helps me.  It really does.

This evening I stated to my family that I was never going to play a video game or watch a dumb television show again.  The kids witnessed this and looked back down at their phones.  The role modeling can’t start soon enough.

Cal Newport has a lot of excellent things to say about focus – and how it can lead to achievement:  http://calnewport.com/blog/

Last Saturday, a friend of mine passed away.  She was 42.  We became friends when we were 13.  I still haven’t been able to fully comprehend.

We double-dated to Homecoming, Courtwarming, Prom.  I went to Worlds of Fun her inaugural weekend of being a dancing panda.  We rode together in her red escort.  Windows down, music up.  She helped me pull off all four of my 30th birthday parties.  I hosted the shower for her first baby.  We took a long trip to San Diego and LA together when we were 29.  Windows down, music up.  We attended each others’ weddings.  We knitted together and scrapbooked together.  We laughed so much.  Our lives intertwined together.

Because of my introversion and generally unrelenting awkwardness, I don’t have a lot of connection to my past.  I don’t have friends from college, I had maintained just one friendship from high school.  She was this beautiful thread through my life, tethering me to a place and a time as we both created families and worked.

And now she is dead.  We had been out of touch the last few years, but not out of each others’ hearts.  We e-mailed every couple of months, just to remind each other that although we weren’t in touch, we still thought of each other.  A few months ago, the company she worked for folded, so she was looking for a new job.  We were strategizing to bring her to the company where I work.  The possibility of that always made me smile.  Now it makes me so sad.

I really, really don’t want her to be dead.  I feel lost.  She was one of the best people I have ever known.

When things like this happen, I guess it is natural to reevaluate.  I have to strengthen existing friendships or make a new one.  Because there is this giant, painful hole.  Both mental and palpable.  I am not sure where to start – how to move past this constant desire to not have her be dead.  I have rejoined facebook.  It drives me crazy because I hate conflict and that tenuous line between bragging and sharing, but if I had been on facebook, Laurie and I would have been more connected.  I don’t know if that is the right place to start.  But I am lost.  I am in search of something I will never find.