Balancing writing and friends: misplaced euphemisms and the price of friendship is tofu

Today at Home Plus with my best friend Alex (female, not male in case gender neutral names might cause some confusion):

"I want some nuts," Alex said walking toward the fruit.
"The nuts are this way," I said pulling her to the right. "I always know where the nuts are. This conversation sounds dirty."
"Why?" She asked. (She's Korean.)
"Nuts are a common euphemisms for balls."
Clearly, still not getting it, she asked, "Why are cashews sweet."

Deciding to continue my one way dirty conversation, I said, "I like my nuts naturally sweet. Oh, look these nuts are just $10.00 but those are seven."
"Yes, but these nuts are $5.00."
"Did you eat all of those nut bags you had?"
"No my father ate most of them."
I linked arms with her. "Lets go get some mangos."

Alex has been a Godsend in the way that some people just are. Finding a my long lost sister by another mother here in Yeongju, surprised and also made me realize how lonely I've been and how much I've sacrificed to write. I love having her around, but writing doesn't get done. And what about the publishing company I started?

Lots and lots of work has fallen to the way side.  She will go home if I tell her to. I can have days or even weeks because our friendship is strong and she wants wants me to be successful.

I've lost too many friends when I folded back into myself so that I could write.... Friends ignored for too long, will fill the time they once spent with their writer friend on other activities. From there it doesn't take long for a friend to be a friend that you see once a month, which becomes once every couple of months and then it becomes somebody you plan to have coffee with but you've got this and that, and they've got this and that ,too, so the coffee doesn't happen. When it's all said and done, you're just friends on Facebook.

Friendship and writing are two activities that are ever so hard to balance. These days, I'm trying not to sacrifice one for the other. But, at the risks of sounding like a broken record, it effing hard.

Alex likes it when I put her to work on vocabulary based tasks or proofreading or.... anything that she feels is helping to improve her English. But I haven't put her to work because, I feel like I might be taking advantage. I don't want to take advantage of my friend.

And yet it's so much better than me working and her reading our horoscopes on her cell phone and asking my opinion or ... (insert the gazillion ways a friend can annoy you while you're trying to get work done) and me getting annoyed and snapping at her. Or me sending her home so I can get stuff done. Or me telling her, "Sorry can't go to the coffee shop today, I have to write." 

And I realized something. When  friend shares your dream they want to help even if only in small ways. Looking at this now, in words, I feel like a fool for not seeing  that before. Obviously, not every friend can be in a writer's life in this way. But the ones who can, are are such blessings.

This is a long way of saying that, today, as I was getting annoyed with my friend, I realized the solution was simple: a second laptop. While I loathed to spend the money, I realized it would remove the greatest obstacle in our friendship.  Now we can go to coffee shops and work on things together, take breaks together and procrastinate together.  Granted, in the end, she may end up using the computer to play solitaire, but  her work product is not the point.

Like the good friend that she is, she understood all of this and more, and gladly agreed to work after we get off work tomorrow (and everyday after). She only made one caveat: tofu* dinner first.

And I realized, that perhaps every writer needs drop box and a second laptop for friends and family who want to be in their lives. Perhaps, this idea of writing with the door closed, is a good idea, but  perhaps including people is also a good idea. If you're writing in a room and a friend is with you, it can be ever so good simply because you're with a friend.

Thoughts? Please share them in the comments below.

*Tofu  =(