Felt okay about that first hour. Pretty jumpy in first section, and then made dedicated effort to slow down in subsequent ones.

The challenges: 1) adjusting to all that time! (I keep wanting to try and cover too much ground in one answer), and 2) dealing with one-off questions made possible by all that time (I will confess that I was thrown by the first question from Hugh on "what is grand strategy?" In hundreds of hours of interviews over the past three years, no one has ever asked me that question!

Deep down, I always feel like I suck after an appearance (you're never as good as you want to be, plus the weird subjective experience is very hard to judge in real time. I'll listen tomorrow and the first time it'll sound really bad. Then the second time it'll sound not too bad, and the third will actually sound okay.

Another reality: first hour-long radio for me in a long stretch (anything over 3 months is FOREVER!) So I expect to feel much more relaxed each week.

Weird bit: while you hear commercials, I get filler music and the voice of God announcing every 15 seconds that "the Hugh Hewitt show will return in X minutes and X seconds!" The countdown is a bit unnerving (should I run to the head and back? Should I practice an answer? Geeez! NOW I have a better answer to that last one!).

Confession: 9 total hours of sleep Sun and Mon nights, due to incredibly early flights in morning. That made it tougher (I am always a bit vaguer when low on sleep).

Best news? Appreciation of both callers and Hugh's producer on my effort and format.

Lesson? You try your best no matter what and it usually works out.