Living to Work: The 99.9% Up-Time Doctrine

The entire World is being rebooted by a Virus. A submicroscopic infectious agent, extremely complex, nonliving, metabolically inert and newly discovered Coronavirus aka #COVID19, has forced our world into a hard shutdown and reboot. As all of our systems began to crash one by one, Covid-19 brought out the bones in our closets into the light. Our backbone wasn’t what we thought it’d be. All of the Defense in Depth protection lessons were completely forgotten and some were never implemented. The Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans were never tested. There were no backups. There was no redundancy. No load balancing. Our Firewalls? They failed too. 

We are experiencing an e-World Total Systems Failure, in real life, in our Physical world. Our #healthcare systems couldn’t take care of the most fundamental needs to protect the doctors and nurses who were sacrificing their lives for others in the frontlines of the worst viral infection in recent times. The illusion we had of having strong financial stability came crashing down faster than anyone could say coronavirus. From coast-to-coast, businesses large and small were affected. Some much more than others. In just a few weeks, our people found themselves suddenly out of cash to pay for food, transportation, housing and basic necessities. For the first time ever, millions of people had to apply for unemployment benefits. Over half a million people (that we know of) got infected by this insidious virus. One too many, lost their life to the virus. These "numbers" and actions taken (or not) speak louder than words. We thought we were a developed country yet, here we are. 

During the craziness of trying to mitigate multiple concurrent systemic failures, millions of people didn’t understand what was happening (if it was even happening at all), there was nobody to listen to (or way too many) for the key facts to keep us safe. Our people were confused, scared, divided, angry. We couldn’t figure out why this was happening here, right now. 

For decades, we’ve all been too busy living to work. Too busy to do anything about the little things we managed to notice here and there. We were too busy to fix anything broken, it’d take too much time to do anything about anything because we had our own problems to deal with first. We had bills to pay, meetings to attend, goals to reach. We’ve been working to death for that lifestyle we wanted! After all, who has the time to care for others when you’re barely making it yourself? Then, one day, everything paused. EVERYTHING! After a few weeks, most of us realized, in the most horrendous way possible, that some people ARE more equal than others. We were all too busy and too distracted with our shiny new mobile devices and all the material things we wanted to care about anyone else's socio economic problems. They weren't our problem. Not us. Someone else. Not here. Somewhere else.

Even though it’s now unavoidable to see the painful truth about our country, about our lives, about ourselves, in the most simplistic view of all, there are still those that aren’t completely heartbroken. They're not even disappointed. The 99.9% Up-Time Doctrine we've all been taught to follow, has succeeded. We have people who are protesting because they WANT to get back to their 70 hour work weeks at minimum wage, without benefits. #ReopenUSA has become synonymous with #liberty. No vaccine? No treatment? No appropriate personal protection against this contagious and deadly virus? No problem! 

There’s people that don’t want this cleverly marketed #NewNormal full of online and remotely accomplished wonders. This is our ONLY chance in this century to change our world and living conditions for the better! Are we really wasting it trying to get back to the OLD "normal"? Why would we ever want to fight so we can go back to that “normal”? Living paycheck to paycheck? Working multiple jobs? Letting our children be raised by our school system? Wondering how you're going to pay next month's mortgage? Rent? How are you going to put food on the table tomorrow? Continuously drowning in credit card debt? Student Loan debt? Living to work and not the other way around? Is that really the "normal" we WANT to go back to? I don't want to go back to that! Maybe that's just me.

We’ve been given a golden opportunity to rise from the horrors of mass disruption and into the lives we REALLY want. This is OUR chance to state our terms for what our country will look like in the future. Tothether, we can make anything happen! I want more time for myself, for my family and friends. I want my children to grow up healthy, safe and happy. I want to see lots of remote workers, less cars on the roads, cleaner air, easy access to healthier foods, endless online possibilities... I want what works for ME and what makes MY life richer and better. I want a better future for ALL of us because WE deserve better! 

What do YOU want?