Spending time with my lover

His name is HP.

And no, it's not short for Harry Potter. Although I love Harry Potter too.

HP is short for Hewlett-Packard. In other words, my computer. And whenever my husband asks me, "are you going to spend time with your lover tonight?" I know I've spent more time then I should cooped up in my office AKA the walk-in closet, making love to HP, and it's time to shut down and take on reality for a change.

The thing is, my whole life is wrapped up in HP. My work is here. Writing is my career, and I do it in front of HP, my fingers caressing the keyboard (to paraphrase my husband).

Everything else I do is also here. Twitter. Facebook. Email. Research. Netflix (yes, that's research too). I read. I pay bills. I balance the bank statement. I blog.

And I can certainly understand why hubby thinks that I like the computer better than I like him. It always gives me what I want, it never argues, and it doesn't feel betrayed when I get up to do something else.

In all seriousness, I have a time management problem. I spend too much time in front of the computer. And it's a problem many of us share. We're sedentary creatures, we writers. Everything we could possibly want is in the box in front of us. With the advent of the internet, we don't even have to leave the desk to do research anymore. With Google Maps, who needs to visit a place to get the feel for it? I've written six books in a series of mysteries set on the coast of Maine, bestselling books... and I've never been to New England.

I'm pretty sure I'll die here, sitting in this chair staring at the screen. They'll have to pry my cold, dead hands from the keyboard. And bury me sitting, since I'll be frozen in this position. Working on my next blog.

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Bente Gallagher AKA Jennie Bentley & Jenna Bennett writes the Do It Yourself home renovation mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime and the Cutthroat Business mysteries for her own gratification. She lives in Nashville with a husband and two boys, a hyperactive dog, a killer parakeet, two African dwarf frogs, two common goldfish, and the love of her life, HP. You can learn more about her doings and undoing on her website.