I got in this morning and I was the only one who'd arrived in my section. My manager was in L.A. for two days and Marcy, who usually greets me in the mornings, was gone now for good after ten years.

The day is perfunctory. Some problems here, some problems there. The office in Bangladesh has burned to the ground. Send them the applications CD, take care of some equipment upstairs, fiddle with the new web page. Someone's got to get the ball rolling, get the the blood to rise, not just for the day, but for the rest of the year, for the rest of my life. I hope its not me and that's pretty sad, because I know better.

I ran into Donna this morning in the hall and she asked me how it was going, was there energy enough to start the new year running? We've had this talk before. And she? How pumped was she? "I ran out of gas around noon last Monday", she said and I nodded.

There's a rule. In uncertain times when your life is a jumble, yet your job is to report on the times, make no judgements at all, don't look for any sense, report exactly what you see, no more and no less, and sense will come.

This advice was given to journalists during the Vietnam era: Riots in the streets, a President in the dock, a war on television, kids taking drugs. How do you report that? How do you put it in context? You don't. You write exactly what you see, exactly what is said and the truth comes out column inch by column inch.

That will be my rule this year. I'm not covering a war or rioting in the streets or a President in the dock, I'm covering me, the goings on of a Sole Proprietor at his desk this morning in January, a little spacy with a list of things to do, but not right now, sometime tomorrow perhaps, or into next week. One day at a time, no rules, no plans. Write what you see, don't eat the yellow snow and good things will come.