The 'OFF' day

I woke up this morning with a certain daze one could only get by sleeping next to an uncomfortable pregnant woman. I don't hold that against her, and I can't wait for her torture of pregnancy to end so we can enjoy the life that comes at the end of it, but for now, sound sleeping is not something I have been coming by. It could be a good thing. It's like my training camp for fathering an infant.

This morning I woke up to the same noise I have been waking up to since I was in grade school; the alarm clock. The dreaded piece of machinery that keeps the American work force on time. I got out of bed after hitting snooze a few [5] times and after a while got out of bed and started to get ready for work. I was wiping the sleep from my eyes with the use of a warm shower. I casually walked down the stairs to the kitchen. I had almost an hour to finish getting ready. I was feeling good. I grabbed the coffee and filters and started to put together my reprieve from lethargy.

I noticed my work blackberry on the counter. It was flashing at me with it's red LED indicator letting me know that there was a message waiting. I grabbed it up. It was unusual to get a message this early in the day from a boss.

Well it turns out this message was from the night before. They changed the time of the meeting to 7:30am. I panicked. I glance at the clock. I am still wet from the shower and only in my boxers and under shirt. It was 7:30am. Holy hell. I'm late.

I slammed the reply button on the phone so hard I thought I might break the screen. I punched out a text message to my boss and started to gather my shirt and tie for the day. I was in 'hurry the fuck up mode'.

I ironed the shirt, brushed my teeth, did the hair, and after hurriedly getting my clothes on, was out the door after a quick peck on my sleeping wife's cheek. Time seems to move in fast forward when you are late. It is just father time letting you know you messed up. He is further punctuating the fact that you are late.

I finally got to work, 28 minutes late. I hate being late. It throws off the rest of your day.

After the meeting [abbreviated for me] I realized I had over 90 minutes before the start of my shift. So I reached to grab my moleskine from my pocket to write down some thoughts on my up coming interview with Adam Taylor. I dug into my pocket and grabbed nothing but lint. The moleskine was not there. Where the hell was it?

As I start to panic even more, I realized that in my hast out the door this morning I left it in my work bag, with my laptop, with my book, with my life really. I just have my two blackberrys [work, personal] and my mind. For a writer with a certain MO [method of operation] this is cause for almost mini shut down. I am ready to blow a gasket.

Lucky for me, surrounded by the technology at my finger tips, I DO have a back up plan in place to get all my thoughts written down and recorded. My Blackberry. Voice recorders and notepads on these devices are great tools, but it is not my prefered method. It's great in a pinch, but there is a certin catharsis in physically writing down an idea. You can tell by the way you wrote the idea what kind of mood you were in. There is much more to writing an idea that capturing the words. The pen also can tell you how you were feeling. The slant on your 's' and heavy period at the end of a sentence. You know that when you go back and explore that idea, what kind of words you need to put in with it, to get the point across later.

I feel like a fish out of water today. Wednesday and Thursdays were my days off. Today is my off day.