A Recent Letter to a Friend

Dear friend,

I’m sorry about my lack of response to your voice mails. I’ve been busy & have not had a chance to look at your newly updated website. With luck, I expect to spend some time on it tomorrow and will let you know what I think of it after that.

One reason I have had such a hard time with life over the years is that I’m really not well suited for doing several things at once. Multitasking is just not my thing.

(I suspect it is not most people’s thing, either, but has been foisted upon us by bosses who hate to see idle workers, even though periods of rest between tasks have been shown to improve productivity and reduce errors.)

In fact, the only time I enjoy work, writing, or reading is when I’m in the flow, focused on the process or the idea or the story and seeing where it takes me. Interruption is death to the flow, so I have to ignore some things in order to get anything done.

When you see me on Facebook, I may be composing a reply, figuring out how to reuse what I already wrote in another way, or pondering where a question or an idea leads. Every time a PM from Messenger pops up on the screen, it interrupts that. I would turn off Messenger if I could, as it’s one of the biggest interruptions to my thinking.

So, please don’t be offended if I don’t return your call right away or answer your PM until later. You know about the losses that have thrown me off kilter and the grief I have been dealing with over the past year. Now, I’m trying to rebuild my life and business. That takes all my focus at times.

I do appreciate your friendship and am grateful to have you in my life. Thank you for being my friend.

— Tim