The other side

Most of my recanting of the last four days has dealt with troubleshooting, data and logistics, the three things required for me to dig my way out of the hole I was in, at least most of the way.  I have not done much detail on the human and emotional aspects of this same period of time.  Let me do so briefly now.

Obviously I personally ran through  large ranges of emotion with what went down. Anxiety, fear, anger, frustration, panic, and despair all were part of the equation at one point or another.  On the flip side, the disaster also invoked others to jump in and support me in any way that they could which made me feel good and reaffirmed what I already knew, there is a large core of great people involved in our group. Their willingness to help make the best out of a bad situation really was touching.

When the 60 year old man dropped 20 yards from the finish line with a heart attack he was literally dead for a few moments with no pulse or breathing.  The fast actions of the on site medical staff brought him back and he is already back home and doing well.  I couldn’t help but think about how if somehow somebody got to my mom just as quickly she would be still here, reading this very blog entry.

The reaction of the race participants to the timing errors and my actions to correct them have have run the gambit.  I would say the appreciative, understanding, nice responses have outpaced the negative ones 3-1 which is nice of course.  However I can’t help but feel more impacted by the loud minority that apparently have never had anything go wrong in their lives and feel deeply offended that we had a timing problem.  Some of these people I have been able to flip around eventually as I continued to get more data available.  The ones that have not are just more comfortable being in a constant state of dissatisfaction I suppose.

These last few days have certainly put some mileage on my emotional odometer.  I look forward to clearer, calmer waters ahead.