A small group of us started a team to walk the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Connecticut (virtually). We record and track our miles/steps we walked, ran, or biked each day. By the end of the first week, our team was hovering in 24th place out of 89 teams. Not too shabby! Watching how our team approached this challenge made me think a lot of the parallels to the situation we at Countway find ourselves, working together from home while maintaining social honoring while physically apart.
Some team members started slow, other team members had spurts—big numbers some days, fewer numbers on others. Some started off strong, then slowed down due to injury. As for myself, I am the slow and steady type. I walk early every morning around the same time; I walk an hour, rain or shine, and similarly later in the day. My steps are pretty consistently recorded, 7 days a week. I am a plodder.
As I see what has happened in our walking team, I think it is indicative of how we at Countway are approaching the endless days of working together while apart. We are a team. Some of us will have starts and stops. Some will have steady days. Others will start strong and slow down and then restart. However, we approach each day individually and it works because we are working together and supporting each other. What I have also noticed about our virtual walking the Appalachian Train team, is whatever our individual number of steps reported out that day are, high or low, we cheer each other on. There are lots of encouraging words, emoji thumbs up!, and “Good job!”, “We have climbed 215266 feet!” “good for you!” “That’s awesome” whoo-hoo!” and many other words of encouragement and messages via text.
I want to say these messages to you too. During this time, some days will be more productive than others. But what I know for sure is that from the stories I am hearing from you about how you are continuing to respond to the numerous requests for information from the HMS community despite the most challenging conditions, you deserve lots of thumbs up emojis and “Awesome job” messages on your phones too.
Stay safe and healthy. Thinking of all of you.
Elaine