A Bit Of A Panic

I hate the feeling of panicking, that debilitating sense of knowing you might be messing up on a grand scale and not having the wherewithal to control the situation. I was viscerally reminded of this truth when I found myself in a minor crisis at 11.45 am today. The state lasted until 12.25 pm but coloured the day.

I won't go into the tawdry, trivial details, but these involved the need to figure out and generate a list of names based on some quite complex data requiring a bit of nifty work on the IT front - and do it in less than 40 minutes. And then send out the list to colleagues who needed it for reasons that had not been explained to me, but sounded pretty desperate. In fact, I wasn't entirely sure of exactly who needed it. I'm not terribly good at anything involving computers but can just about cope in an emergency, which is what I did.

Actually I'm still not entirely sure my work was accurate, but since no one has got back to me to tell me otherwise, things are okay for now. And I've got time to recheck the data which I originally assumed would only be needed early next week. So it seems there's no harm done and a quartet of valuable reminders to self. 1) Expect the unexpected just at the time you don't expect it. 2) Remember how bad it feels to panic unnecessarily and do as much as possible to avoid circumstances in which this can happen, knowing full well it will happen anyway. 3) Avoid inflicting such situations on others, remembering how bad it feels to be one of the afflicted. 4) Don't worry; be happy.