…is the Army’s delicately phrased way of telling you that you’re about to be jerked out of your regular job and put on a plane to go stay in a hotel and do something that may or may not be in any way related to your primary area of expertise. Temporary Duty (TDY) is a strange combination of work and happy hour where the two tend to bleed into one another to the point where it’s 9:00 at night and you’re not sure if you are working or just sitting at the bar having a drink… but in a good way. Even when home, I’m not exactly known for leaving work at the door, but being here on the road, it turns into something more of a compulsion. You talk about work having your morning Starbucks. You talk about work driving to the office. You spend 9 hours actually working. And then you spend 2 hours talking about work over dinner. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly monotonous, but it does beg the question if any of us have lives any more. I’ll step to the forefront, save you all time, and admit that for me, the answer to that question is a resounding no.

For the record, I’m not complaining about it, just making an observation that struck me as interesting; how many of us have put or lives on hold to work on this project over the last 18 months. Up until last week, things were academic, like moving the pieces on a chess board. But now we’re here, with a real building, real offices, and whole lot of real people who are betting their livelihoods that we have it all figured out. It’s a little intimidating to see how much is still left to do, more, probably, than we have put behind us. It occurs to me tonight that it’s time to stop being academic and to figure out how this applies here in the real world.

Here comes the hard part.