Amazing Story from Yesterday's Post
As you may know, I ride the DC Metro's Red Line trains every day as part of my commute, and because of the places I've lived it's been a near-daily part of my life for the last 13 years. Last Monday's crash of two Red Line trains, needless to say, was kind of unsettling. No matter how many times I tell myself, "You couldn't have been in that accident ... you're never going that direction at that time of day. And you never ride in the front or back car when you're traveling in that direction," it's just not really true. I've raced home to change before an after-work event before, despite the foolish length of the commute. I've raced up the escalator to be the last person on the train, jumping in to the front car just before the doors ding closed. And when I'm traveling in the *other* direction, I pretty much always ride in the last car.
So far all the evidence is pointing to a computer malfunction of some kind being responsible for the crash, which would seem to imply that it could have happened anywhere on the line, at any time, if the circuits had failed in precisely the same way. I can't even count the number of times I've been in a train that paused between stations because another was just ahead of it on the platform or the tracks. Heck, one of the best things about the Red Line is that during commuter hours they run practically every 3 minutes, so they can get stacked up really easily.
When the accident happened, I was at the office entering the final week (or so we thought) of an extremely stressful proposal process. Once I "got over" the initial shock, and my thoughts of sympathy for the people caught up in the crash, the main issue on my mind was how much more difficult and time-consuming this was going to make my commute, and how that would interfere with me getting this proposal completed. I guess it also helped me avoid really thinking about my personal connection to the crash.
Last night I pulled an all-nighter to get the proposal done, and then literally just hours before the deadline (which we were going to hit if somewhat imperfectly) the agency we're submitting the proposal to announced a three-week extension. By email from Tanzania. At 2:30 a.m. Sent to only one person in the whole organization. We pulled the plug when we heard around 4:45, and even now, after dragging myself home and getting some sleep, my mind just wobbles from the sudden change in momentum.
So that should give you a bit of a sense of the mental state I was in read this article from Sunday's Washington Post, which as the link that recommended it pointed out, is a powerful argument on behalf of the continuing value of print journalism. It's about the people who were in the death car in the Red Line crash, and it's one of the most powerfully written, emotionally wrenching stories that I've read in a long, long time. That may have a lot to do with my own personal relationship with the Red Line, but I still definitely recommend you read it at home rather than the office ... it's powerful stuff.
So what's the point of this long-winded ramble and article forward, which I also mass e-mailed to a bunch of people, anyway? Not much, other than to acknowledge that even I'm not oblivious enough to ignore this kind of a wake up call, and that it's about time I got off my ass and started dealing with a lot of different things about my life. A job where I'm not underpaid, pulling all-nighters and constantly wrestling with distant co-workers to get projects done would be a good start, but I also need to spend less time idly surfing, more time writing things down, and a lot more time reaching out to the people I know and love, and those I don't know as well as I'd like to.
I guess this is also just my overly verbose way of reaching out and saying, "Hey, how have you been?"
So far all the evidence is pointing to a computer malfunction of some kind being responsible for the crash, which would seem to imply that it could have happened anywhere on the line, at any time, if the circuits had failed in precisely the same way. I can't even count the number of times I've been in a train that paused between stations because another was just ahead of it on the platform or the tracks. Heck, one of the best things about the Red Line is that during commuter hours they run practically every 3 minutes, so they can get stacked up really easily.
When the accident happened, I was at the office entering the final week (or so we thought) of an extremely stressful proposal process. Once I "got over" the initial shock, and my thoughts of sympathy for the people caught up in the crash, the main issue on my mind was how much more difficult and time-consuming this was going to make my commute, and how that would interfere with me getting this proposal completed. I guess it also helped me avoid really thinking about my personal connection to the crash.
Last night I pulled an all-nighter to get the proposal done, and then literally just hours before the deadline (which we were going to hit if somewhat imperfectly) the agency we're submitting the proposal to announced a three-week extension. By email from Tanzania. At 2:30 a.m. Sent to only one person in the whole organization. We pulled the plug when we heard around 4:45, and even now, after dragging myself home and getting some sleep, my mind just wobbles from the sudden change in momentum.
So that should give you a bit of a sense of the mental state I was in read this article from Sunday's Washington Post, which as the link that recommended it pointed out, is a powerful argument on behalf of the continuing value of print journalism. It's about the people who were in the death car in the Red Line crash, and it's one of the most powerfully written, emotionally wrenching stories that I've read in a long, long time. That may have a lot to do with my own personal relationship with the Red Line, but I still definitely recommend you read it at home rather than the office ... it's powerful stuff.
So what's the point of this long-winded ramble and article forward, which I also mass e-mailed to a bunch of people, anyway? Not much, other than to acknowledge that even I'm not oblivious enough to ignore this kind of a wake up call, and that it's about time I got off my ass and started dealing with a lot of different things about my life. A job where I'm not underpaid, pulling all-nighters and constantly wrestling with distant co-workers to get projects done would be a good start, but I also need to spend less time idly surfing, more time writing things down, and a lot more time reaching out to the people I know and love, and those I don't know as well as I'd like to.
I guess this is also just my overly verbose way of reaching out and saying, "Hey, how have you been?"