Recently, I was sanding the pine walls in the bedroom of a house I have had for thirty years. The house was a real fixer-upper, and it was my weekend project for most of those years. I found myself letting the world slip by as I concentrated on the job at hand. This time, things were a little different, as my mind slipped back to when I first learned to lose myself in my work.

I have always worked on something, and as a kid, I was always around my dad on his construction jobs. By the time I was twelve, I was as good as anyone he hired. I found working to be an escape, where I could take my mind and go as deep as I wanted into the job, which meant that anything I did was well done.

This was the way things were throughout my working life, which was good for my career. It wasn’t until fairly recently that it occurred to me that this has a lot to do with my home life as a child. My mom was not a happy person; she was bipolar at a time when mental illness carried a stigma, so it was never acknowledged.