Your Best Laid Plans

I woke up early this morning, a full hour earlier than I normally do and well before the first meows from one of our two tabby cats usually begin. On farms they have roosters, but in our household our appropriately named “Song” says it is time to get up and feed/pet her while her sister, Hope, rests quietly in the other room.

I knew we should have gotten a dog from the pound instead.

From the very first day of the year, I have been busy. Tremendously so. Most of my clients are keeping me occupied, but I am also preparing some queries to send out to magazines once I have completed my research on what to send and to whom to forward this information.

To those who do likewise, you know that these sort of campaigns are a major project by themselves.

Today was to be all about catching up as the press days for the 2010 Detroit auto show (NAIAS) are now over. I was not able to get to Detroit for this year’s show, but I was online constantly on Monday and Tuesday to follow the press conferences, juggling that with my other work.

This show is important to me as it helps me find out which models are new and of these which I will cover for my clients. You see, as an automotive columnist I have to submit my editorial schedule for approval as much as twelve months in advance of print date, but with all of the changes in the auto industry over the past year or so, that information is harder to determine.

Nevertheless, by week’s end I should have an updated list to send off, but I can see one major distraction keeping my eyes focused elsewhere.

And that distraction is a deadly one: yesterday’s cataclysmic earthquake in Haiti.  Many thousands are dead, untold numbers of people are injured, and the impoverished country located on the western third of the island of Hispaniola may never recover.

Then again, what does a recovery look like when you are already poor?

At the moment, I cannot think of anyone that I know who may be in Haiti. Back in the late 1980s to early 1990s, I sponsored a pair of young men there at different times through Compassion International, but one soon left the program while the other aged out.

I am racking my brain this morning trying to remember their names, not that I can help them out directly. But I can pray for them.  God knows these nameless men; I hope that they and their loved ones are safe.

Only once in my life have I been profoundly affected by a disaster to the point where work was difficult, if not impossible. Working just nine miles from the World Trade Center site in Teterboro, NJ and for a business aviation company at that, I saw what a terrorist attack could do to shut everything down.

Even when the airplanes could fly again, our business was never the same. Over the next year I endured a salary freeze, a company merger, and a decrease in work responsibilities while also working through a localized recession brought on by the 9/11 attacks. 14 months later I was one of thirty people let go; I started to work for myself the following week.

In the early 2000s, a lot of people in the US were not aware that the economy in the NY area took a big hit, financially and psychologically, one that took years to recover from. Today, NYC is in a different recession, having lost thousands of financial jobs, many of which will probably not come back at least for now.

Job loss certainly is not on par with life or limb loss or the devastation of having lost your entire home, perhaps your whole family. Both are painful, but one is clearly life altering. As in forever changed.

And that is why my best laid plans are not going as expected today — I find myself curiously drawn to the unspeakable horror in Haiti and suffering that I cannot wrap my mind around or keep from following closely.

See Also: Haiti Earthquake Relief