Work in Progress intro

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was that it was raining again. Third time in a week, not that I was complaining. There's a certain quality unique to the sound of falling rain; it has the ability to drown out the thoughts of others, no matter how loud they may be. On a rainy day, I wouldn't have to dread leaving my house, fearing that the sound would overwhelm me and force me to take refuge in some corner market, while passersby regarded me with something between concern and apprehension. On a rainy day, there would even be less people on the sidewalk, so the chance of coming across an errant exclaimed thought was much less likely. I sighed and stretched, disturbing the black furry blob that was Atticus, my most loyal alleycat. He gave off a noise, something between a meow and a chirrup, before prancing off of the edge of the bed and out of the room.
My alarm hadn't yet gone off; the bright blue LEDs read "7:18," leaving me almost a full hour and a half before I had to get to work. Given my condition, I had done everything in my power to procure some sort of occupation that didn't necessarily require me to get out much, and I knew for certain that working in customer service was completely out of the question. I had played out the scenario several times in my head, running through exactly what would happen every time I was on the phone with a customer. They would think something. I would respond, thinking that they had said it out loud. They would promptly freak out, and no longer want to work with our company. Right? That may have been a slight overreaction, but I was sure that any customer would surely catch on to something weird going on after oh, say, the sixth or seventh time that it happened in one phone call. I could never be sure, and it was for that reason that I knew I had to get into a very particular line of work. Something that could be done at home, with little to no supervision or human interaction.
Journalism.
The company that hired me was apprehensive, at best, when I told them the stipulations of my employment. I would come to the office when required, but requested that most days I be allowed to work from home. They questioned me mercilessly, but I was able to convince them that I simply had a social disorder that made it difficult for me to work in crowded office areas. That was three years earlier, when I was fresh out of college, and the editors had agreed to give me a chance, based mainly on my four year degree and a handful of stellar recommendations from my professors in college who had seen just what I could do when I didn't have to be subjected to a classroom. Now, I had become one of the most sought after writers in the Baltimore area, one who does the most intricate research to get the job done. I sometimes wonder if I would still be so sought after if anyone knew the truth behind my most exquisite research.
Which more or less brought me to today. It was a rare day, a Tuesday, when I was expected to go into the office to attend a once weekly meeting in which we would discuss everyone's assignments, as well as the expectations and goals for the week and month. I had, in some serious instances, found a way to get out of even these outings, however I had decided that day to take full advantage of the weather and go out, for the first time in about a week.