Perspective

I wanted to write a long, whiny post this morning. I got up at 5:00 this morning to run the snowblower through the driveway. Doing it that early would allow me to lift weights before work. But, between the time I finished clearing the driveway and when I hopped in the car, the plow truck came by, and I didn't hear it. As I was leaving the house, I slowed at the top of the driveway to look for traffic, and suddenly saw the huge amount of snow left behind by the plow. My car got stuck - bottomed out on hard-packed snow.

My wife and I spent an hour working to dig the car out with no luck. Finally, a neighbor towed me the rest of the way out. By this time, I had to skip my workout and I came straight to work. The shower was out of order. No workout, no shower. I was pissed.

But, after finding an alternate shower to use, and coming back in the building, I heard our CEO and another senior manager talking about the tornadoes yesterday and how some people died with no warning at all. Just like that - entire families were dead.

Quickly, I felt like an a**hole for turning such a minor set of incidents into a big deal. I'm healthy enough to invest huge amounts of time in an essentially meaningless sport. I have enough money to travel to races. My family is healthy. I have a nice house, two cars that run, a family that I love, and I get all PO'd about a morning that doesn't go perfectly.

We probably all need to occasionally take a look around to see what's more important than our own little worlds.