It's 4:00 am & Pitch Dark...

It's 4:00 am, pitch dark, and our kids were crying out from their bedrooms. They had been woken up by the howling wind outside. Their night lights went out because of lack of power in our house, so it's no surprise they were scared and crying out for Mom & Dad.

This past Sunday night / early Monday morning an intense storm ripped across the state of Maine where we live. By 8:00 am Monday morning almost 500,000 homes in the state had lost power, the highest number at any one point in the state's history. As I'm writing this message Thursday afternoon, we still have not regained power in our house. It has been stated by the power company they expect the vast majority of the state to have power by Saturday evening.

While 6 days without power may seem like a terrible inconvenience, the impact, at least for our family, has been quite minimal. We've had lights, heat, hot water, a working stove, refrigerator, and freezer. The savior for us has been a generator wired into the house strong enough to power almost all our regular electrical needs (can't run the clothes dryer).

When we bought the house the generator was a sticking point of the negotiation, the deal almost fell through because of it. We worked out a compromise and are now reaping the benefits.

So many things happen in life that are unexpected...I don't know any legitimate work related injury where the employee thought he or she would be injured that day. While we can never know exactly when these things will happen, we can properly plan and prepare for those events which have the highest likelihood of occurring at some point in the future. It can make all the difference in the outcome of that particular event.

That's what this week's video is about, getting past the excuses and taking the first step to properly plan and prepare for managing workers' compensation injuries.