Essential #AtoZChallenge

Blogging from A to Z Challenge
April 2017
This month I will be participating in the “Blogging from A-Z Challenge” 
What is it?

Blogging every day.  It starts on April First with a topic themed on something beginning with the letter A, then every day in April, (with the exception of Sundays)  another topic continuing through the alphabet ending with, of course the letter Z.
I really don’t have a theme.  Some will be fiction.   Mostly whatever strikes my fancy.

Essential

es·sen·tial

əˈsen(t)SHəl/

adjective

1. 1. 

   absolutely necessary; extremely important.

On September 11, 2001,  I was employed by the Wall Street Journal.  My position was not a glamorous one.  I wasn’t a reporter or an editor.  In fact I didn’t even work on Wall Street.  I was ensconced in a cubical on the basement level of a corporate center in Central New Jersey.
I worked in the IT department as an e-mail administrator.  Our group’s job was to maintain the inter-company email system.
Working as an IT support person meant carrying a Blackberry 24/7.  Yes, that’s what we carried back then.   My co-workers and I had a rotating on-call schedule.    By 2001, after 20 years of that grind, I was experiencing burn-out.
That day, the day of the attack, I remember watching the news on one of the break-room TV’s as the horror unfolded right in front of our eyes.
I remember being terrified.
I also remember the only thing I wanted to do that day was go home to be with my family.
The New York headquarters building for the Wall Street Journal was across the street from the World Trade Center.   The group of newspeople who managed to get out of the building and out of the city made their way down to Central New Jersey, where I worked.
It was pretty much chaos in our center as we scrambled to get the reporters up and running to be able to write their stories.  The newspaper had never missed a single day of publication.
A directive came down from the head of IT that no one was to leave.  We were to stay all night if necessary to support the reporter's technical needs.
Our group was considered essential.
Frankly, I remember thinking that getting the scoop on this story and making sure that the production of the paper was not to be interrupted, did not seem very important that day.   At least it wasn’t to me.
What was essential to me was to be home with Ross and to make sure my children were safe.
I stayed that night until the wee hours.
But that day was also the day I decided to retire.  I have never regretted my decision because since the day I am the one who decides what is essential for my life.