[Rebecca] What it's like.

You wake up at 6:30 am. It's dark. You get up and turn on the computer, start downloading all the mail. Maybe there are 50 messages because a few thousand people in Australia just found out you exist, or maybe there are just ten because it's only been a few hours since you last checked your email before heading to bed.

You take a shower because you smell. You shave half your body because you're a girl. You get out, brush your hair, and spend ten minutes digging through the pile of clothes on the floor for something that still smells okay.

You feed the cats because they're loud and annoying, yet still somehow cute enough not to throw in the river with a sack of bricks. They purr, then shed hair all over the dark pants you just put on, and then they poop eight feet from where you're trying to eat your toast. Thanks, jerkholes.

You answer a few of the emails but mostly focus on mapping out the details of your one-hour radio pilot. You've worked with your mentor to get the fuzzy bits down, but now it's time to flesh it out. You did a pre-interview Saturday, and have another today at 4 p.m., so you should focus for a minute on what you'll ask. Then you should try again to find that group you wanted to record. You know you want to do something on people opposed to vaccination, but you can't find a meeting to attend, or a person to hang out with to get the audio you want. Maybe you should switch, or maybe you should think of another way to illustrate the problem for the audience. What do they want to hear? What do you want to say? What does CPB want to fund? What will be feasible with your budget and time?

But all that will have to wait, because it's 7:30. You have to brush your teeth and put on some lip gloss or something, and then hop on your bike and ride 30 minutes to the train, and then take the train another 40 minutes to the shuttle bus, which is about 10 minutes from work. You take along the book written by the guy you'll be interviewing soon, for the 50 minutes of sitting.
Normally you'd spend quieter moments at work researching stories and blogging, but they recently gave your department a talking to about inappropriate use of the Internet, particularly blogging at work. So you sneak the occasional glance at Gmail to see that your mentor has sent you 15 emails about potential guests, booking time at studios, ideas for segments. He's very, very good. You fantasize about a life where you have a spare 12 hours a day to answer his emails and really make something you'll be proud of, without driving yourself nuts.

You spend lunchtime doing sneaky bits of research and working on your normal 9-to-5 work. After lunch, PRX calls to remind you that you should really be blogging. People miss you and want to hear that you're still alive and working on delivering something brilliant.

At 4 pm, you quickly wrap up everything on your plate and dash off to an empty cube to call your pre-interview. She's good. You get all the info you need and head back to your desk to finish up real work.

At 5:30 you leave work. Shuttle, train, bike. You're home by 7 p.m. You make grilled cheese and have a glass of wine because it makes you forget that you have a degenerative disc in your lower back that is attempting to kill you. You turn on some Magnetic Fields because 69 Love Songs is the greatest triple album ever created, and Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits still makes you smile. You have 70 emails.

You feed the god damned cats. How are they still so cute?

You answer as many emails as you can, as many Facebook and Myspace and YouTube messages as you can. There are three major non-public radio projects that are just too overwhelming to think about right now. Each one could easily be a full-time, 40-hour per week job but you still try to do it all yourself because you're an egoist and you don't really trust anyone to do it right. You notice a MySpace message from married friends. Their photo has a baby in it. They were pregnant? You remember that you forgot to call your best friend from high school, who was waiting on a big job offer. You are an awful, awful friend. You are lucky to have friends who forgive you for being a bonehead.

You think about the things left to do, and the time left to do it. You yell at yourself for not being appropriately happy for such an amazing opportunity. You think of how cool it is to be putting together a radio show. You think of all the people you could reach, all the people you could entertain and maybe educate. All the cool science you could explore. All the cons and frauds you could expose. All the amusing people you could talk to. All the things you could learn. All the places you could go.

You blog. It's 9 p.m. and you have at least another three hours before you have to go to bed. Maybe you can finish that book.

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