Mine did today. Not like September 11th or anything. But, in a way that makes you slow down and remember what is important.
I started off the day great. I went into the office today and started bionic-ing through my inbox around 7:30 a.m. Around 8:15 a.m., I found out that my morning meetings were cancelled because the main client had a sickness in the family.
So, I sat down and went through 350 emails in three hours! It is so rare I get three hours of uninterrupted time, that I truly acted as the bionic woman.
Around noon, the fire alarm went off.
You have to understand our environment. We work in an old historical building. One that was rocked by a recent DC earthquake. Talk about feeling rickety. Plus, there are often weird smells, false alarms, and right now....contractors putting in a new roof. We experience the full on tar smells at times.
So, it is always a guess as to whether there is a real emergency or not. In this case, those of us that were there, did go.
Most of us gathered the person, phone, keys combinations and left our laptops. That in itself is rare because we all carry our laptops to meetings and if we want to work in a quieter spot for a few minutes. But, not this time.
I trotted off to the post office a block away to mail a letter and was shocked to see smoke rising from the building on my way back. Wow! It was real!
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Apparently, as I write this the fire still isn't out. Some news stations showed water pouring out the windows on the left side which wasn't looking as badly damaged as the right side of the building. I sit in the right wing. The latest footage shows that the entire roof is gone and I'm assuming that my space has been caved in, water logged, and maybe even in flames since the attic was the first to go and we had one of those flimsy tile ceilings above us. It was a new office space as of this time last summer. So, we got one good year out of it.
We are all safe.
That's the important part, right?
Just a reminder that all our "things" can go up in flames, but our values, skills, knowledge, relationships and beliefs will stay with us. That should give us our laser focus on what is important.
Here's the video from a local station.
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