April 20th, 2020: Worked through night (with no sleep)
It is 11 p.m. on a Monday night and I’m still at work. I told you I was working 24/7. I received a call from my contact at the call center who informed me they just were awarded the contract for the state of California and needed to fill seats immediately. She define immediately as 9 a.m. the following morning. A ten hour deadline! She asked “can you get one hundred?” I can’t remember if I verbalized it or I just thought it that “I’m good, but I’m not that good.” I was on it and went to work, through the night, without sleep, for the first time. Hey, I needed a first?
I had primed this pump by communicating “please let me know if you need any more callers. I’ll fill whatever number of jobs you need.” My “why” was driving me. My unwanted confidence came from the many people I knew who were hurting and losing jobs. This included my friends in my industry around the country. It was late and being hungry I decided to go home to catch an after midnight dinner. I had not eaten. After dinner I put together as many FAQs as possible and typed up the call center program highlights through the night. I took a quick shower and headed back to work to email what I had put together to my friends to see who needed a job.
The above is an excerpt from page 127 of my book “A Leap Year of Firsts.” Sometimes when writing this blog, I look back to see what I was doing on that day in 2020. Three years ago, on this day I had worked through the night without sleep to help others. At the time, in the context of the pandemic, when many were losing their jobs, my “WHY” that was driving me was to Save Jobs. “Save a job = Save a life” had become my mantra. My sleepless efforts produced jobs for 123 people from across the country who had lost them to answer the calls of the unemployed in California trying to gain their unemployment benefits. These jobs were to help others who had lost theirs and were looking for assistance to obtain their benefits to get them through the crisis. Well worth a few hours of lost sleep. It was THE FIRST time in my life I had ever worked through the night without any sleep for anything!
??? – Have you ever had to work through the night with no sleep driven by a passion? Driven by your WHY? Do you have a WHY that drives you?