Thursday, 9 Oct 2003

SEATTLE, Wash.

An excerpt from Merriam-Webster.com:

diary (n) — … a daily record of personal activities, reflections, or feelings

I’ve never been good at keeping a diary. I think I was seven the first time I tried to start one. I got through two entries, both of which described what I’d had for breakfast (Cheerios). And I distinctly remember reading over my second entry, and thinking that the details of my morning diet would be, without doubt, of even less interest to posterity than they were to me.

True at age seven; even truer at age 35.

But this is the diary section of Grist. And I think the readership deserves a proper accounting of a typical day at an environmental think tank:

8:55 a.m. — Turn on computer. (Hello, old buddy!) Bask in warmth of eerie blue glow.

9:00 — Procrastinate. Do anything that’s tangentially related to work, but isn’t actually work. Some examples: Scan national and regional newspapers for important environmental news concerning … whatever! Or, hone math skills by converting calories in a Milky Way bar to petroleum equivalent. (Fascinating factoid — two Milky Ways contain as much energy as a stick of dynamite!) Or, edit lame, self-serving diary entry written at midnight on previous night.

10:30 — TOP SECRET. I’ll tell you about it later.

10:45 — Consume self with guilt over lost morning. Resolve to procrastinate for no more than 15 more minutes.

11:00 — Make tea.

11:05 — Get to work. Stare at computer monitor. Occasionally make clicky-click noises with mouse, or tappy-tap noises with keyboard.

1:00 — Eat lunch at desk. Procrastinate.

1:25 — Congratulate self on not wasting full half-hour for lunch. Make tea.

1:30 — Agitated frenzy of clicky-clicks, tappy-taps, and monitor staring.

5:15 — Go home. Bask in warmth of non-eerie glow of daughter’s smile; or, alternatively, hand her over to her mother while she has a tantrum.

Pretty dull stuff: The day of the typical office drone, post-computer era. I can only hope that all of the mouse clicks and keyboard taps — even the backspaces — eventually become spreadsheets of incomparable clarity and accuracy, or crystalline prose that inspires Northwesterners to cherish and protect their place on the planet.

I’ll let you make up your mind when you read tomorrow’s entry.

In my daily routine there’s a slot labeled “Top Secret.” But I’m ready to let the cat out of the bag: For 15 or so minutes of each workday, I write headlines for Daily Grist. I’ve been doing it since the very beginning of the magazine, back in 1999, when I worked for Grist’s erstwhile parent organization, Earth Day Network.

They roped me into doing headlines because, well, I’m a compulsive punster. I used to pun uncontrollably; I’ve driven away friends, shortened romances, driven my wife to the end of her wits with lame attempts at wordplay. (Whoever said that punning is the lowest form of humor was, I freely admit, right on the mark. I don’t really appreciate puns, I just make them.) But now that I have a defined time of the day when I know I’m allowed, even encouraged, to make puns, I’ve reduced my compulsive punning in casual conversations. Which is a big help on those rare occasions when I actually interact with humans, rather than my computer.

There are two other side benefits of writing Daily Grist headlines. First, I get fan mail. Not a lot, but enough to make me feel that my compulsion is, if not universally welcomed, at least not universally scorned. And second, in the course of working with the wonderful folks at Grist, I’ve actually met the elusive Umbra Fisk, in person, in one of her rare forays from the library stacks in the basement. And she’s every bit as charming in real life as she is on your monitor.

I have to admit that, lately, I’ve been running on fumes. There are only so many ways you can make a pun on, say, the word “owl.” Owl be back. Owl be seeing you. Owl in a day’s work. Owl’s fair in love and war. Owl in the family. After four-and-a-half years of stories about owls, my reservoir of owl puns is drying up. Same for whales, and GM foods, and mines, and practically any other type of story that regularly appears in the news. In a way, I’m looking forward to the day when I look at the day’s news stories and draw a complete blank. That’ll be the end of one compulsion — and time, I suppose, to pick up another.

Tomorrow, I’ll yammer less about myself, and more about NEW’s work. I promise.