The 80s station that usually wakes me up and compels me to turn off whatever New Wave classic is spinning was not playing music. And it wasn't a commercial either. It wasn't even the impossibly old DJ making bad jokes--it was news. I sat in my bed for a minute listening, trying to figure out what they were talking about. Something about a plane and a building and "sad and cowardly acts." I wasn't clear about what had happened, but I had to get going. I had to get up, take a shower and go to work. It wasn't a snow day, so I clicked the alarm off and figured I'd turn on the TV after I got dressed.

"Something happened," I mumbled to my roommate as I spooned cereal into my mouth and switch on the TV. As he took his place in the shower, I tuned into the madness, only an hour or so old. The first tower hit was still standing and in flames, but the second tower had just collapsed after being hit near the belt with a fully loaded passenger jet. It was surreal. And even though I knew this was some sort of turning point for the nation, it didn't hit me for a while. The first tower was still standing and in flames when I left for work.

I listened to usually manic DJs trying to be sober for the first time in years during drive time traffic. Cop cars were circling the Bank of the West building at Central and San Mateo, one of the tallest buildings in the entire state of New Mexico at 20 to 30 stories.

I made it to work without incident, and everyone was watching TV in the break room. Both towers had fallen. Rumors were flying. Camp David was hit. Two planes had crashed in rural Pennsylvania. A bomb had gone off at the capital building. The mall in Washington D.C. (not a consumer mall, but the walking area between the Washington Monument and the White House) was on fire. Nostradamus predicted all of this, including naming the day and flames in "the great city." All of these rumors would prove false. What we knew at the beginning was pretty much what happened. It was enough.

There was work to do, but no one felt like doing it. We had a meeting, which was prefaced with the statement that people could go home if they wanted (it would be counted as a sick day) -- no one did, because it's just as easy to watch TV at work and get paid for it as it is to go home and use a sick day.

The company I work for does business with lots of companies that have offices in New York and other places on the east coast. Our boss was in Greenwich, Connecticut, on the morning of the attack. He was to present reports there and in Chicago during the week. None of the presentations actually occurred, and he would still be stuck in NY at the end of the week, unable to get a flight home.

Tuesday took a week to get through, Wednesday was at least two days long and by the time Thursday and Friday came in at their regular size, I felt as though I'd been working--and not really remembering or concentrating on what I was doing--for a couple of weeks to a month. Except that a week hasn't gone by yet. Monday is the official "start over" day for the nation. I'm not sure what starting over really means except that there will be sports on TV again.

On Friday night in Clovis, New Mexico, a small town on the border of New Mexico and Texas where I lived for the middle ten years of my life, the Homecoming football game went on as scheduled. Between a quarter and a third of the town showed up to cheer them on to victory. It was a return to normalcy, in a way. Something to show whoever planned these attacks that we will not sit still and wait. We will continue on with our lives.

Eventually this will happen all over the US and the world. Everything will go back to normal as much as it can. 24 hour coverage on most stations will change back to regular programming with "special bulletins" cutting in every once in a while. Airports will bottleneck passengers even more than they had before. The U.S. flag will be a fashion accessory. The President and government will use strong words and throw threats around like they are door prizes. Friends and random strangers will range from being war hawks ("Let's bomb all of those bastards!") to being overly cautious about sounding less than patriotic about any ambitious retaliation.

And maybe I'll figure out where all of this fits with me. I was born in Washington D.C., but never lived there. I don't remember living on the East Coast at all (though I did for a year or so). I have friends and acquaintances there, but none of them live very close to ground zero. All I feel are aftershocks and reactionary flames.

I stood at the top of the first fold of the Sandia mountains on Saturday, looking down at Albuquerque, New Mexico. My city. Nothing had changed. We are still the same spread out, ranch-style metropolis it's been since I joined. Of course, only a couple of planes flew past while I was way over a mile high.

Someone called in an emergency call to the nation and world on Tuesday. How we eventually react to this will be the real change. The flames on the eleventh day of the ninth month were merely a catalyst. What this nation becomes in the aftermath is the real test.

Matt Worley has been reading news tickers with the sound off too much this week.