Dateline: SWA flight from BWI to PVD, 7 April 2005 (1900)

Southwest peanuts for dinner, plus a Heineken off coupons.

After a mad dash from Annapolis on US97, I just barely make the 1850 flight that Esquire sets up for me (Tyler Cabot, Mark Warren's right hand, did the honors). This way the mag gets stuck eating a hotel room in VA that they bought on a non-refundable Internet special, but I get to eat at home tonight.

After blogging a bit in the Pentagon City Mall, I took the subway one stop to the PNT itself, hanging out in the visitors lounge until my Army Lt. Col. Handler showed up from the public affairs office. Then off to my 1100 interview with a senior civilian.

Much like my briefs, I tend to start slow as an interviewer: chit chat and some offering of analysis to tee up the conversation. That typically triggers a lengthy response where the subject finds his bearings. Then you start asking specific questions. I will confess to writing fewer and fewer notes each time, focusing more on eye contact and follow-up, and only writing down the phrases that really stick in my head.

To my delight, I have gotten good at watching for the microcassette recorder's click-off when it reaches the end of the tape, and I can flip in around and back in and start it right up faster than you can wink. Today, my subjects simply stopped mid-sentence to accommodate me, and I took that as a compliment that I've gotten past my fumbling.

This interview went well in the sense that I got this perspective I find quite useful for the story, but each one sort of disappoints on their own: always just the one perspective that you must add to all the rest. No one interview provides the kicker, but each provides the sliver. Right now, I'm at the point in the story formation where I'm kinda pooling various observations into categories. So with each one I get a sense of something close to a 360 degree picture emerging, albeit in my way of looking at things.

I will readily admit this, and it worries me to no end: I am not the type to let the story flow through me unimpeded, anymore than I was ever the objective analyst. To me, I just want to crack this nut, figure out how and why it ticks in this way, and explain in the way that I've figured it out, with little effort to make it clinical or objective.

Does that make me a bad journalist? I'm not sure yet. Maybe I just need more time and experience to decide how I define such things.

I do worry I can't narrativize this in the way that Mark Warren wants for the piece, and so I go back and forth about this thing being something I will conquer or something I will abandon.

Still, fear is a good thing. Good for creativity, so why walk away from a chance to fail greatly? It's the only way you learn anything.

After the interview in The Building, I subway back to my car, armed with some phone numbers from the public affairs people (nice of them). I land an interview with a Former at his house in Annapolis, getting a phonecon interview (possibly F2F) set up with a retired Flag for next Tuesday.

I get to the Former's house around 4pm, and run with the interview until 5:15, when I can feel my internal alarm go off about my 6:50 plane at BWI. So I slip out rather easily (this guy would have talked all night, but I got the gist in about 45 minutes) and just make it to BWI in the nick of time, of course being treated to my first truly intense look-over from TSA in several years. Why? Bought a one-way at the last minute, that's why. Esquire's travel people helped by adding an extra "e" to the end of my last name. I will have to thank the guilty party on that one. But hey, who doesn't like the up-close attention of a pat-down?

Heading home, feeling tired, I try to convince myself that this was a good day, that I'll get better, and that I'll someday soon feel cut-out for this job.

Bit disconcerting? Sure. But again, a little fear is a very good thing.