This post was written by Jennifer
What To Do If Your Parachute Fails To Pop Open
You know what I think you shouldn’t be doing if your parachute fails to open; trying to figure out who the heck will take care of your blogs. Although, as bizarre as it sounds, without a solid emergency plan in place, that’s likely one thing I’d be thinking about. NOT the only thing; but I’m sure at one point, I’d think, “Damn, who is going to finish that series on recycling terms?”
Of course the above is extreme, I mainly used it because I’d really like to go skydiving one day, but if you blog full time you do need a plan for what will happen if something happens to you; if you get sick, laid over in a city and your laptop breaks, or worse.
My current plan is flawed.
The first part of my plan is good. Someone very close to me in my real world life (i.e. offline life) has an email saved that contains all my editor and client contacts and my schedule. If something were to happen to me, this person would be one of the first to know, and could contact all my clients. I trust her and she knows how to email people - don’t laugh, my best friend can barely use the computer (we’re not alike - she’s also really shy). That said, make sure you choose someone you trust, but also someone tech savvy enough to manage the task.
The part of my plan that’s flawed is that if something did happen to me this individual might be too upset to email lots of clients. The second part of your emergency plan is to choose someone who is actually an online pal that you trust, who knows where you work, who has that contact info, and who is also neutral enough to get the job done. You can give your online pal’s name to your real life friend and you’ll be all set. All your real life pal has to do is send one email to your online pal. Double covered.
I don’t think it’s wise to depend on just an online friend. If I vanished from the internet for a few days I’m sure people would worry and email me, but they’d have no clue what was going on because they’re not in my real world. If you work online full-time you do owe it to your clients to keep them up to speed. Now, do you have an emergency contact person?Or better yet two.
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5 Responses to “What To Do If Your Parachute Fails To Pop Open”
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I did give a trusted family member all of my passwords and also gave her the email address of a close blogging associate who would know who to contact “just in case”.
I wrote about this before at Performancing, you really do need to have a plan in case something happens.
My wife has all my details and also blogs on my sites. So I guess I have that sorted. She knows all passwords to almost anything I have.
@Deb you do need a plan I need to up mine a little.
@esvl you know, I never thought about passwords for stuff. Of course I wouldn’t need to give out passwords on my blog for others gigs but I do have many of my own blogs and besides this one - which Deb could handle, no one knows my passwords for my other personal blogs. Good point.
Jennifer, this had never occurred to me, but there’d be a bunch of editors around the world waiting very impatiently for my posts if I suddenly landed in hospital or some other internet-free zone. As soon as I read this post I emailed a list of all editors’ names and contact details to someone reliable … hopefully, though, that’s an insurance policy I never need! But if I do, my editors now thank you for this good advice.
Amanda, I’m all superstitious - the fact that you did all that work hopefully will ironically mean you never need to use it