Tuesday, March 27, 2012

E is for Emergency

Do you ever say, “How much worse can it get,” only to have something follow that with something worse? Well, it has been that type of few weeks. The craziness has even interfered with my weekly blog postings! YIPES! Well, every week something gets experienced, learned, logged. With luck, we get a chuckle out of some aspect of the event and, eventually and usually much later, we can smile about it. Such has been my last few weeks.

It is good to have your routine completely disrupted from time to time. It challenges your ability to response and adapt and change as needed. For example, I had the next few weeks completely planned out, or however relatively they get planned out, when suddenly I had to attend a training session for 3 days. Then throw in taking my mother to the Emergency Room, then the doctor, following up on prescriptions and more phone calls. My iCal became an I Can’t Take this Anymore!

But that is not true. I did take it and adapted as required and moved on.
Now my mother is home and relatively well and my schedule is someone back on track. What this experience reminded me of was that life IS unpredictable. You can plan and cover every base, but that just does not stop “stuff” from happening all over place. Gee, I just sounded like a Seuss book!

I have been talking about preparedness a lot lately. To faculty and staff, to friends and acquaintances. Gentle reminders, mostly, but also pointed conversations about the “what if.” We simply cannot predict what will happen in the next minute or hour or day. We can expect and plan our day around those expectations, but ultimately we react to whatever comes our way.

E is for Emergency, but it is also for Expect. Expect something will not go as planned, or even desired. But with some level of preparedness, we managed to get through the crisis and end up a little battered but not broken and ready to face whatever E comes our way.

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