Begin again

So after a week away and a lifetime of changes, I'm sat at my desk with a cup of tea waiting to start work.

Officially I start in 12 minutes. I don't have a thing to do, to design, to write, to email. I could add to my endless documentation of Search Engine Optimisation (it started as a good idea, honest) but I am struggling to process the simplest of information this morning, and self motivated work seems to be dangling just that little bit too far away, an uninviting carrot.

No one will be in work for at least an hour or so. What will they give me then? Who will give me work?

I dreamed about him last night. In a mess of scenarios, all of them just random strings of consciousness. I have woken up feeling uncomfortable, distracted, tired and in need of someone to talk to, or at least something to distract me in a more productive direction, to take my mind of it's vulture-like thoughts, circling and circling around this.

I wonder how everyone else is coping at work, how it has affected everyone. I feel foolish in a way, embarrassed at the way it has affected me. Do I have the right to feel like this? Do I have the right to care so much, to feel so much grief? I feel so, so sad.

Last night the tears came in fits and starts, but I allowed myself to be distracted through conversations and television and endless reams of Dilbert to try and help me sleep. This morning, I am staring at an empty inbox, wondering how everyone coped last week. Were they fine? Did they cope better than my delayed realisation now returning to work?

Before I went on holiday, I noticed a few inflections of loneliness in my work. Long days, where I felt tired and my bones were heavy and my thoughts were heavier. It scared me, because this is what I do. I work from home. I have beautiful, beautiful Newfy by my side. I have the radio. I speak to those same few people over and over again throughout my day at work, on Skype, on MSN, on the phone, via email. The same voices, the same conversations, each of them adding a colour to my day.

I couldn't go back, for so many reasons, I wouldn't want to. Again and again people have asked me if I am lonely working from home. I never have been. I never have been. But these voices that build strands of detail in my day, the accents, the discussions, the diversions into nonsensical conversation or client gossip, they held me from that.

Before I went on holiday, I don't know why they were showing through. I felt like my consciousness was becoming translucent and behind, beneath, ugly thoughts were lurking. I don't know why. There are things I miss, but there are things I couldn't ever part from. It can be so much more deeply lonely working in an office. I have experienced that to such a degree in the past it scares me to remember.

One of those people, one of those intrinsic voices and fabrics in my day isn't going to be there anymore. Perhaps the absence has left a larger void than I understood. My selfishness in my personal loss sickens me, a guilt I have ignored is there, beneath. It is intertwined with this continual sadness, this loss, this aching for his family, his friends, the deep rooted, relentless pain they must be enduring. We were friends of circumstance, colleagues. I hope he would have chosen us.

It is now 8:08. I am torn from my blog by guilt, and am faced with nothing.