I am an army. Or, a one woman army that is. I am the boss, the labor, the mail room, the journalist, the publicist, the marketing department, tech support, payroll department, collections agency, receptionist, and janitor. What usually takes a group of people to accomplish together, I manage to do solo on a regular basis. That is, I do until I get sick. Then, suddenly I become just labor working on projects in the background under blankets while all other tasks fade away. Mail piles up, marketing comes to a stand still, tech support suddenly becomes ignorant to advancements, and the janitor? Forget about it!

Is there a way to avoid any of this? Out side of moving into a plastic bubble and never leaving a single room – I don’t think so. My immune system has always been a poor one. Ever since I was little, if any sort of germ came within three yards of me I would catch it. But life never seemed to care about that and was always rudely moving forward without waiting for me to catch up. So, like all things, I learned to adapt. I pushed through. I had to, there was just no other option. Somewhere along the way, the word PUSH even became my motto. I now keep it on my cell phone as the welcome message. That way, whenever I sit down to work I can remind myself that if I just keep pushing, eventually I will make it through to the good stuff.

I am writing about all of this today because I seem to still be sick with whatever it is that I managed to catch last week. But, I have been able to stay connected enough to realize that a few of my fellow designers are also fighting wicked colds. And I have noticed that none of them are stopping either. In them, I can see the army fighting on the front lines, pushing to get through to the good stuff. In them, I see strength and that, in turn, gives me strength. When I look at them, I think, maybe I’m not such a one woman army after all. Maybe I am surrounded by solders fighting the everyday battle.

And that, makes me want to get up off the couch and fall in line. Next to them – my personal heroes.