My office is located at the side entrance to our house, which means that anyone familiar (read: everyone except people who want to stop by and sell us some Jesus) comes in through the door, here. This is to say that my office tends to be a main thoroughfare, in addition to being a fairly sunny space (which I enjoy). Nevertheless, I often refer to the office as My Cave. As in, “I just need to get back to hiding in my cave so that I can get some work done.”

I’m well-suited to working from home; I like being alone, and other than the, erm, occasional baking session, I’m fairly disciplined about tending to my work when I’m here. I’m able to bury my head so deeply in what I’m doing that sometimes when the kids get home from school, I’m still in my bathrobe. I’m not saying this is a good thing, just that it happens. I get lost in my work, and I enjoy it.

But I fear I’m starting to become a Weird Writer.

Part of it, I’m sure, has absolutely nothing to do with writing; it turns out that my tolerance for Girl Drama is inversely proportional to my age. As in, the older I get, the less time I have for the sorts of theatrics many women seem incapable of leaving behind in middle school. So, given a few friends who still engage in the sort of indirect message-sending that drives me insane, yeah, I’m going to choose cutting myself off from socialization over trying to figure out why someone is clearly annoyed with me but won’t say why. [Aside: Seriously, people. Last time I checked, we were all adults. I realize I sometimes lack tact, but the flip side of that is my willingness to deal with things if only you take the time to tell me there's an issue. Nothing sends me back to my desk faster than a rousing game of "guess what my problem is." If you don't value our friendship enough to be direct about it, I can't care enough to play detective. I'm kind of too busy actually being a grown-up.] [Hey, good thing I don't have any strong opinions about that, huh?]

The other thing I notice happening now, though, is that as I get deeper into certain projects, I just find the conversation easier with other people who are writers. And I’m not just talking about discussing work—although, obviously, it’s easier to discuss a lot of that stuff with colleagues than with someone who maybe doesn’t understand why the lack of continuity from this section to that one is such a problem—but also general chatting. When I drift into non-sequitur-land because my mind is still back on the third paragraph of that page I just can’t get right, a fellow writer at worst totally understands what I’m talking about, and at best helps me figure it out. A non-writer just looks at me like I just announced that it was “definitely time for Wapner.”

All of this is fine, except that I don’t have local writer friends. Which means I’m spending more time with email and the phone, to reach those who aren’t around, and less time with people in person.

Which means I’m spending the majority of my time hiding in my cave. And I’m okay with that, most of the time. Though if a few of my favorite writer-friends wanted to move in down the street, that’d be okay with me, too. You know, before I become even weirder than I am now.