Yesterday I read the following in the New York Times article titled “Americans Worried About Flu’s Impact on Finances“:

…while most adults are not overly concerned about their own health or that of their families, they are worried about the financial hit they will take if illness or school closings keep them home from work, according to the survey by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Some 44 percent of those surveyed said they would lose income if they missed work for a week to 10 days due to illness, and a quarter said they could lose their jobs or businesses altogether.

It makes me appreciate some choices we have made over the last three years.

2006 was a heck of a year for us.

In February V’s mother passed away.  As the only child descended from a long line of hoarders, V was the one left to put things back together.

For the next 12 months we found ourselves week by week progressively deeper in the accumulated detritus of a century of multiple ancestor’s indecision. Throughout that summer we cleared a large two-car garage from a state of total clutter (I don’t exaggerate when I say you literally could not get more than two feet into the garage) to totally empty. That front of that house was filled from driveway to driveway, sidewalk to curb, 3 to 4 feet high on at least four separate occasions. Thus it went for the entire house plus another property 40 miles away in Ellis County.

I recall once commenting to V as we were engaged in one multi-property clearing push that we had just carried a truck load of trash across four different counties.

It went on like this, almost without cease, through the first quarter of 2007.

But one thing happened during this time that makes the title of this post of profound significance. In May of 2006, despite the press of events, we had started a second business to provide some additional income. We worked on it as much as we could between my “day” job as “the coach” and the relentless chaos that was spinning around us. Around late November of 2006 we were both so totally burned out that it was all we could do to put one foot in front of the other let alone work on building more business. For all practical purposes we were barely in business from late November of 2006 through March of 2007. But we were surprised (make that delighted) that the business we had started in May continued to grow. We were receiving regular checks based on things we had started nearly a year before.

Fits standard 8-up nametag labels. Enjoy!

So here I am now happy to announce that despite the craziness of these economic times my “Plan B” is continuing to build and grow.

I’m not smug about this. Frankly, it was partly dumb luck.

But I am still heel-clicking delighted.