Sometimes, life throws surprises your way. Whether the surprises are happy ones or not, they are likely to affect your home – based business in one way or another. Since surprises happen unexpectedly, it is difficult to prepare for them. The key to recovering from a major surprise is to react to is as best you can.
Last Friday, I received a very big surprise. I had to go to the hospital for an ultrasound and some lab tests. At the time I thought that I was about thirty six weeks pregnant. That meant that I still had approximately another month until the baby would arrive. While I was having the ultrasound, the doctor measured the baby and looked at his development. He looked at me and told me that I was not thirty six weeks pregnant – I was over thirty nine weeks pregnant and the baby was healthy and fully developed. Surprise!
A few minutes later, another doctor came by to see me. She had some not so great news about my health. I had developed preeclampsia, a medical condition for which the only “cure” is prompt delivery of the baby. Surprise! Thank goodness my baby was fully developed because I would have to deliver him the very next day. My son was born a month earlier than I had expected. In the week since his birth, I have been in the process of helping my family adjust to our new arrival. I have also been taking steps to help my home – based businesses recover from the surprise.
While I was in the hospital for a few days after my son was born, I wanted to get a little work done. I had even brought my laptop along with me. No work got done though because I was exhausted and recovering from surgery while taking care of a newborn. Once we got home, it was still two more days before I was able to get even a small amount of work done. I am lucky that there was not too much on my plate at the time that I had to stop work so abruptly. Thanks to the fact that I am working for just a few, wonderful clients I was able to communicate with everyone about what had happened fairly promptly. From there I made a plan for each client about what I would do to get the work done. Now, I just have to see those plans through to completion and I will have absorbed the impact of the recent, very happy surprise that happened in my life.