I’ve been spend­ing some time off-line late­ly, friends. Ask­ing my house­mate to dis­con­nect the inter­nets before she goes to work, telling myself I don’t know how to plug it back in. Appar­ent­ly I need trick­ery like that to write a book.

Mon­day was one of those off-line days. I spent the morn­ing down in my writ­ing lair, try­ing to fig­ure out just how to explain the mechan­ics of salmon trolling to non-fish­ing read­ers with­out bor­ing them (and me) to tears. As soon as I paused for lunch, my phone rang.

Joel did­n’t both­er with a greet­ing. “Are Charles and Cami and Bill okay?”

I did­n’t know why they would­n’t be. All run­ners, our friends had long been antic­i­pat­ing this big day.

“There were explo­sions at the Boston Marathon. They don’t know how many peo­ple are hurt.”

Oh no…

Long­time Hooked read­ers know about my friend Cami Ost­man — this blog began thanks to her encour­age­ment. Though she’s com­plet­ed a marathon on every con­ti­nent, Cami was­n’t run­ning in Boston. She was there to cheer for her hus­band Bill, a four-time participant.

Charles Claassen is anoth­er friend of sev­er­al con­nec­tions. Years before we met Charles, we heard about the great chef prepar­ing our salmon at the North Cas­cades Insti­tute. Sev­er­al years ago, he left NCI to open the Book­Fare Café, housed in Vil­lage Books. Our good for­tune: with Book­Fare, Charles has cre­at­ed one of Belling­ham’s beloved “third places.”

As soon as Joel hung up, I texted Cami. “WTF? You guys okay? Send­ing love…”

Moments lat­er, my phone buzzed. “We are ok.”

Cami has since writ­ten about their expe­ri­ence, post­ed here on her blog. It’s an impor­tant read, and makes me new­ly grate­ful for my friend — not only that she was okay, but that she’s the per­son she is, the one who will make the con­clu­sion that I most need to hear. You might need to hear it, too.

I haven’t got­ten much writ­ing done in the past few days, but am still try­ing to steer most­ly clear of the inter­nets. The bar­rage of fren­zied head­lines, wild, type-before-you-think spec­u­la­tion, and vicious com­men­tary does­n’t help me grieve those suf­fer­ing or be the per­son I want to be. I want to choose love over hate, com­pas­sion over fear. Before and after, I choose to believe in the good­ness of peo­ple. It’s nev­er trum­pet­ed as loud­ly as heart­break and hor­rors, but we can ampli­fy human kind­ness through evi­dence like this Sit­ka man’s self­less­ness, and these TED talks, and this wom­an’s res­o­lu­tion. We can choose what we take in, and what our take­away will be.

Of course these choic­es are root­ed in the priv­i­lege of dis­tance. Would I still find com­fort in pret­ty thoughts  if peo­ple dear to me had been among the maimed and trau­ma­tized? If my expo­sure was­n’t so sim­ple as not click­ing on a par­tic­u­lar link, and the view out my Pacif­ic North­west win­dow was­n’t so serene, where two squir­rels squab­bling over a peanut was the most vio­lence I’d seen today?

I can’t say.

Like any of us, all I can do is turn to the things that give me com­fort. A long snug­gle with sweet­heart and cat. Med­i­c­i­nal music. Choos­ing which steps will car­ry me for­ward, while hold­ing oth­ers in my heart.

You’re includ­ed among those thoughts, friends. Be care-full, be well.