On September 11, 2001, Monica Lyons died at the World Trade Center, where she had worked as an executive assistant at Marsh & McLennan Cos., for over 30 years.

When I agreed to join the 2,996 project, I wasn't sure what I was going to write about. I mean, what hasn't been said about that awful day?

Then I read a mini-biography of the woman to whom I was assigned to pay tribute, and one particular fact resonated with me: this woman had worked at the same company for longer than I had been alive.

And it occurred to me that there was a common thread that united almost all of the people killed during that tragedy — they were at work that Tuesday morning.

Secretaries and stockbrokers, Department of Defense employees and janitors, the police and firefighters that came to their rescue, all died at work.

On the planes themselves, the flight crews were doing their job, and many (most?) of the passengers were business travellers.

On the morning of 9/11, the first person I spoke with (not the first person I tried to call) was the receptionist at my job, to let him know that I wasn't coming into work that day.

I heard a disgusting anecdote about my previous employer, where a boss insisted that people continue working and meeting, instead of watching television or (gasp!) going home.

And I knew someone who was an attorney in the World Trade Center and managed to escape with her life.

The only time I'd been to the World Trade Center was for work (during a brief stint as a financial reporter). If I'd graduated three years later, who knows — I could have been interviewing an analyst that fateful morning.

Work is where we spend most of our waking hours, most of our lives. I wonder if there isn't some significance that the terrorists attacked workplaces, rather than purely symbolic (e.g. the Statue of LIberty) or person-dense (e.g. a huge football stadium) targets.

Perhaps they recognized that these were quintessentially American targets.

And now, I am off to work.

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