Boogie Boarding in the Garage

In the middle of June, I broke my ankle in a boogie boarding accident. (It happened in my garage but there was a boogie board involved so I’m sticking to that story because it makes me sound cooler.) As it turns out, breaking your ankle is kind of a big deal. Especially when your bedrooms are all upstairs. I was forced to learn to do new things. Like stair crawling. How to use crutches. Badly. I also learned that there’s something called a knee scooter (aka My Best Friend). And that virtual backgrounds are pretty awesome when you’re propped up in bed working and don’t want anyone to know.

Other things I learned: My family loves me. I mean, I knew that. But they took really good care of me. I saw true empathy in my 9-year-old. It made me proud. And my neighbors, it is confirmed, are awesome humans who show up in masks with food multiple times because they know it’s hard to cook on one foot.

There are some unexpected outcomes of a true challenge. Things you never think about until you get thrown a whammy. Like a pandemic. The insurance industry has also been forced to learn some new things. Like how to use Zoom and Teams. Power tricks for working remotely. How to attend a virtual conference willingly even though everyone would MUCH rather be in person. How to pull together a webinar. I even heard a rumor that some millennials learned to use a telephone to communicate. (Unsubstantiated rumor. But gives me hope.)

As a media company with remote workers around the globe, we were lucky that we had most of the tools we needed to thrive already in place. We didn’t have to order 2nd monitors or scramble for IP phone solutions and more bandwidth. But we did have to think about the changes in our reader’s lives. We offered magazine home delivery. Business interruption resources. We even created a topic section front online to keep up with the latest on the pandemic. https://www.insurancejournal.com/coronavirus/

As a marketer, I struggled to balance the need to showcase our solutions with the desire to showcase our sincere concern. I also struggled to find synonyms for the word ‘unprecedented.’ But I digress.

Things are looking more optimistic now. But maybe life will never be the same again for any of us. We’ve all learned new tools and we’ve learned something about resilience. We learned how to pivot. Lots of us have more appreciation for teachers.

My ankle is thankfully getting better. But one thing is for sure. I’ll never take walking for granted again. And I’ll never underestimate the love of family, friends, neighbors and coworkers. What have you learned through all of this?