0355 hours our daughter comes into our room hoping to snuggle and sleep with us. within seconds an enormous wave of pure Drive hits me and I awake fully. Can I get Army of One task done today? I quickly settle her into my spot in the bed, tucking her in and soothing her, getting her back to sleep. I gather my things and go downstairs by 4:00 to get dressed and start working on aggregating some news from Google news.

0400-0413 dressed while troubleshooting home router and dsl connection, loading news from Google, and making screenshots. Check overnight Praxis, read messages (very nice message or two from folks!), post.

0413-0433 read article printouts. ate breakfast of reheated pancakes, small juice, glass of water.

0433 left the house. Inspired by auspicious time, performed a stand up rendition of John Cage's landmark composition 4'33" accompanied by distant helicopter and the sound of the hvac unit on the dollar store across the block. I remained appropriately tacet throughout. Performance concluded with the forte arrival of the bus at 438. No one received the impromptu concert, but I thanked the bus driver the way one might thank the audience. As I inserted my bus pass I said "thank you, thank you." Spent the ride reading info week and T+D magazines, marking pages and underlining, to prep for presentation in a couple weeks.

0459 Transfer busses. Call in to office voice mail to begin leaving notes--waiting for bus transfer and realize I've been awake for over 1 hour now and should start on to-do list. Organizing articles to fit for presentation to conference. Complete newsletter draft formatting and send for final approval. Complete mail list update. Complete site updates per LCR/bus. development. Start To-Do list items per Thursday conversation. Work on reformatting case studies. Cross-coordinate calendar for remainder of month for getting to know you meetings. Complete task. Complete summary to Prof. Malcolm. Find photo cable. Complete email to some SF0 people. Prepare for plan b if door passkey doesn't work.

0508 Arrive at work. check email, voicemail. transcribe voice mail. Found photo cable!

0510-0525 Fact checking through WowFacts 2006 book on women and diversity. Particular focus on technology usage across demographic categories. Flagged several pages.

0530-0540 SF0 proof submission--Thank you the MGMT. I think the server must sometimes mark things on central time, sometimes on pacific time, yes? I was not submitting proofs at 339 a.m., I assure you!

0541-0550 went to work out, but pass key didn't work. Saw co-worker who is usually here earliest. He asked what I was doing so early I said "an experiment."

0552-0605 sorting and filing. Also went through physical inbox and did some David Allen-like "GTD" stuff on it.

0605-0612 reformatted case studies for later publication
0612-0615 reviewed calendar for remainder of month "getting to know you" meetings
0615-0618 write note to company president, review current notes for class, but do not finish summary for Professor malcolm.

0630-0651 lunch of whey protein drink and MRE style bagged tuna. Compared client data listing between online database and paper asset form 3 at a time. updated web data on 16 clients.

0650-0725 researched and updated four event items in online calendar database for our site.

0724-0730 review demographic data on Gen X for article, task completion review and message checking.

0740-0812 reformat enewsletter, prep mailing list (10,000 emails!), explain sf0 and "army of one" to co-worker who was also surprised to see me here before she is.

0812-0818 receive rejection letter on a short humor piece from McSweeney's. Boldly dare to turn around and submit the same piece to Salon. Why think small?

0820-0913 get key card working by visiting building management office. Supper of creole seafood soup, rolls, gatorade, blueberry yogurt. Did PT (walked over a mile on treadmill), demographics research and flagging notes in articles, and watching tv. Prep for shower and eat, take shower.


Okay, frankly, I think that's a lot. I think there's mofos out there who don't do JACK before 9:00 a.m. (I'm often one of them) and I think this represents a pretty decent completion of the task. I think there's some strong arguments to be made: on a global scale, I think it's arguable that possibly MOST people don't eat three meals a day, don't get enough protein, don't have clean water. Most Americans? sure, we break all those records for consumption (not three squares by 9, but you know...). I don't consider myself a morning person, but I do feel a certain amount of morning momentum when I get up early. So that helps. I think I might be becoming a morning person over the last couple years...

I think most people, myself included, stretch projects out. That enewsletter formatting job I did sometimes takes a lot more time, hours if there's photos involved that I have to run down, just to get to first draft stage. Most people don't read as much news as I do in a day, and today I got pretty well versed in where Nancy Pelosi is and what she's doing, how the Edwards campaign is doing in Iowa (surging), and some sense of the progress on climate change (slow and hampered by corrupt idiots).

The Army gets so much done because they have a very strong structure and because there are so many things that need to be done--exercise, keeping well fed, keeping weapons in perfect order, more exercise, maintaining a state of catlike readiness, etc. In my more quotidian life, I have less structure and fewer urgent things. I do feel like I'm contributing on some kind of "front line" sometimes, because I'm playing the ol' breadwinner card for the family back home. But I'm not being prepared to kill on a moment's notice. So it requires a lot of multitasking and frenetic activity, often doing absurd minutiae, to pack that in. I think sorting and filing, as well as checking databases, can be somewhat compared to the weirdness of the army... like learning how to break down an M-16 or whatever in the dark.

So how do I feel? Full! I frickin' compressed three meals into 5 hours. That was dumb. Also, tired. I didn't have any coffee, deciding to eschew the breaks when I decided not to try too much to "make it more like a work day." But I'm ahead of the rest of the office in terms of productivity. Though writing out this proof took me longer than it did to do about eighteen things that I did from 6-7 this morning. Sheesh.

**Edit: the only other thing is, do I add Eleanor as a collaborator? Without her chance awakening me, i could not possibly have gotten started on the task in time. In good conscience I can't decide. Impossible without her, but she didn't really do anything during the task.