It’s the last day of September. For the last 10 years, October has been the beginning of the season wind-down at King of Pops: the bank account would be looking pretty good, and we would be looking forward to some much needed time off, both to recharge our batteries and to make plans how we could do it better the following year.
However this Spring, a couple weeks after our company cruise and just days after we had wrapped up a 50-person company Symposium hosted by our good friends at @ZingTrain, I first started to hear about Coronavirus.
I experienced the next few weeks in what I am calling Stage 1: "Disbelief".
I’ll never forget sitting in bed, talking to my wife about it. Was Coronavirus going to be a disruption? After some back and forth, we agreed that worst case, it was going to be an inconvenience for a couple weeks and things would quickly be back to normal. At that time there were only 12 cases in the United States.
I remember moping around that week, frustrated that our high from training was not going to make as much of an impact and that our momentum would be slowed down. King of Pops’ 10th Birthday Party was coming up and we had a week’s worth of activities planned. Surely this wouldn’t affect our birthday.
Soon after, more local events started to cancel, then some of the largest festivals, but there was no way professional sports could be cancelled…
Then week after week, the unbelievable became reality. It was a brand new feeling for many of us. It didn’t seem real. The idea of a 14 day quarantine with everything stopping seemed so challenging. I had no idea that things could even play out the way they did. But like it or not, we were all in it together…
It’s helpful for me to reflect on this season, and I’d love to hear your reflections too. What were those first weeks like for you? (I’ll process through the other stages in the days ahead).
