God always keeps the light burning

As you can see, my mood has changed from "busy" to "relieved". Not that I am no longer busy but the feeling of relief is more overwhelming than any other emotion right now.

In my three years of working for The New Zealand Herald and now Herald on Sunday, never have I considered the prospect of us printing a newspaper with a huge advertising space that's BLANK... until last Friday.

Ours is a revenue and deadline driven industry, a fast paced environment. And everyday, anything can happen. By that I mean anything and everything you can imagine and not. Stress is ALWAYS present. It's just a matter of keeping the level as low as possible. One of the best ways to cope with that is to strongly believe that for every problem, there is a solution... ALWAYS. No matter what. That at the end of the day, it will all work out. The paper will print and readers wouldn't have the slightest clue about the dramas behind the scenes. We have to believe there is light at the end of the tunnel, sometimes so near yet so far away but nevertheless, it's there. And we do see it and savour it as we walk out of the building after hours.

Last Friday was alarmingly different though. I had a huge gap to fill, waaaaaaay past booking deadline and with very few prospective clients in mind. That was to be the biggest hurdle for the day, on top of squeezing a one hour meeting in my already hectic day; negotiating a contract with a client and stepping in for my boss to brief new employees of APN Print NZ in their induction program about Herald on Sunday because my boss was having lunch and drinking wine at a fancy restaurant with the who's who of the industry. My other colleagues had "challenges" of their own so the fate of that huge space rested in my hands alone.

At 3pm, God sent me an angel-client and the space was booked. But it wasn't to be the end of my nightmare. It was just the beginning. Client's creative designer was not available to make a new ad for him. We, on the other hand, didn't have any of his old and current material available that meets the exact dimensions of the space. We explored all options (upsizing, downsizing, revising previous ads etc) but one - creating a new ad from scratch. That was absolutely out of the question because there was no time for it. None of the other options was possible either. Then came another problem of production department holding a low resolution file which they would not allow to print. My world was crumbling fast.

At 4pm, I wasn't panicking as much anymore. Not because the problem was solved but because I had simply given up. Incredibly, I uttered the deadly words "I don't know what to do anymore." I felt my body almost like, letting go of its last breath and dropping dead. I could swear I heard the alarm bells and saw the flashes going "GAME OVER GAME OVER". And the tunnel was pitch-black.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breathe and almost instantly, I had this renewed belief that there REALLY was light at the end of my pitch-black tunnel. I could not bring myself to stop believing that. So I opened my eyes, took another deep breathe, raced down to our production department like one of the unstoppable Incredibles, discussed the problem and my proposed solution to the Supervisor then sat down with the graphic designer and pretty much behaved and spoke to everyone in no uncertain terms that we were gonna make it happen MY WAY, by hook or by crook. And we did!

So there's my big 'WHEW!'

Of course that sigh of relief also goes to...

all my friends and acquaintances based in London accounted for - all safe and sound

friends' family members who've been ill are in stable conditions

friends who lost loved ones are finding the strength to cope and remain positive... truly inspiring!