If you’re lucky, you’ll have at least one friend who listens to your every story, joke, worry, and musing, no matter how boring or seemingly trivial. You’re even luckier if they take an interest in everything you do creatively and in your life in general, rooting you on when it seems everyone else is too busy or just doesn’t care enough to take the interest. I was just that lucky when I met a silly old broad from New Jersey. (She loved being called that, so it’s purely complimentary.)

I met Carleen in a car forum called Focus Fanatics—I had a Ford Focus, she didn’t. She had followed a friend of hers to the site after they met on another forum. She was just discovering the Internet and… Read More ➤