Alive
I had a wonderful, relaxing holiday and hope you all had the same. You may have noticed I didn’t blog much/at all. That would be an accurate observation.
I’ve been debating about whether or not to blog about this…this blog is about my company, not my personal life. However, I do think it is relevant in more than a basic way.
The picture to the right is my car…or former car. Sunday night, wanting to get a head start on driving back to Goshen from Lancaster, I took off around 10 pm after my family Christmas ended. I drove about 40 minutes and the road turned from wet (it was raining) to ice — my guess is the temperature dropped below freezing really quickly.
I slid off the highway in my Honda CRV and (according to the police — I don’t remember this part) rolled three times and came to a stop, right side up. I was wearing my seat belt (do people still NOT wear their seat belts?) which saved my life. I climbed out of the car and then came the scariest part — another car went flying off the road and 30 seconds later, another smashed into it. A woman had come over to help me and almost been hit by the third car. In total 8 cars flew off the road before the state police shut it down.
The firemen arrived and immediately put me in a neck brace. A 20 minute ambulance trip (I tried to convince the paramedics not to cut up my nice jacket, but they wouldn’t oblige) brought me to Hershey Medical Center, one of the top trauma centers in the US, where I was poked, prodded, CAT-scanned, X-rayed and examined. I spent the night there flat on my back in a neck brace hooked up to an IV, unable to eat or drink in case they had to perform surgery. The next day, after the trauma resident cleared me at 1 pm, I walked out (err…my sister wheeled me out) with nothing more than some soreness and a big scab on my forehead.
Looking at my car later that day I felt woozy…seeing the dirt and grass on top of it finally convinced me I had actually rolled over in it. This may sound hokey, but Monday was one of the happiest days of my life — I should have died and somehow miraculously walked away. It’s hard to describe the joy (and other mixed emotions) I felt.
Starting and running your own company is a more or less insane process (often described as a rollercoaster ride). You’re doing something no one else is doing. People tell you all the time you can’t do it. You have to believe in yourself and your idea more than anyone (and project belief even when you don’t). Throughout the process, you are constantly reevaluating your sanity and deciding how/if to proceed. Do you keep being insane? Do you listen to the naysayers? Do you get a regular job with a regular paycheck and call it a day? Is your idea really a good one?
RedPost is more or less an organizational embodiment of me. Going through this experience and having 12 hours to stare at the ceiling led to a lot of reflection on my life and my current career choice. I naturally asked the question, “What should I be doing with my life?” The answer was RedPost. Now is the time and place for RedPost in my life. It’s reassuring to me to feel this…I felt it before, but having a should-have-died experience and solidifying this feeling in the context of that experience feels great.
2008 is going to be an exciting year for RedPost. I’m happy to be alive and to continue this journey that I started. Always wear your seat belt.
