Some days it seems like a neutron bomb has exploded across the country and I, sitting in the basement bunker that is my office, am the only person left. I reach out to the world, but get no response. My e-mails vanish into the ether. I don’t know whether they are being received or ignored. My voice mails start to sound a bit lonely and desperate, like a high school nerd trying to find a date. I call Comcast just to make sure the broadband connection is still up. Never reaching a real person (which is not unusual when you call Comcast) increases my paranoia.
There is no deep, dark conspiracy behind these days when no one is out there. They just happen, out of the blue, like when solar flares knock out satellite communications. I’m fairly sure that everyone has days like this, but since I work alone my overactive imagination can get the better of me. Maybe some horrid rumor is circulating and everyone – editors, sources, colleagues and friends – has decided to blackball me. Or I remember 9/11, when I was oblivious to what was happening in the world until my best friend e-mailed me one short, curt message: “Are you OK?”
I tune in to NPR just to make sure.
I roust my dog from his afternoon slumber, just to get a rise out of someone. Then I do the one thing that always guarantees an end to the silence: I take the rest of the day off. I used to be annoyed when I’d return to dozens of e-mail replies and returned phone calls, as if everyone had waited until they knew I was out of the office. But I’ve learned to chuckle at the cosmic joke. And be thankful that people still want to talk with me after all. And start again tomorrow.