Updating Disaster Recovery

Today I wanted to talk about something that I've been putting off for a bit, but finally got it done today! I managed to updated the Disaster Recovery plan. Completed one of my Resolutions for the year!

People who work in the technology space are likely at least familiar with the phrase Disaster Recovery, or maybe downtime plan. The latter does not really apply here though, but I guess it could in some strange ways. Really though, this is about Disaster Recovery and how to properly plan for it, so that if it does happen, it doesn't destroy everything!

What am I talking about here? Well anyone who has a family and some assets needs to have some type of plan in place for the situation where you are seriously injured or even killed or died suddenly in an accident or something. We all know that we don't want these things to happen but this is life we are talking about, and it's fragile! With that fragility, the best thing to do is be prepared and have things written down and documented in case of a tragedy that strikes.

I had put something together several years ago and made some slight adjustments to it every so often as I would think of it but I didn't really make an overhaul to it until today, for whatever reason. I'm not one to make "resolutions" in the sense of doing some stupid things at the beginning of the year but I did make some, and one of them being that I update as much information as I can for my wife in case of an unfortunate event. Hopefully that doesn't mean I'm going to get a lightning bolt smite from the heavens now that it's done LOL. I had some extra time the other day and it is one of those things that nags at you in the back of your mind; you know you need to do it and update it but you put it off for other things in hopes of eventually getting back to it. That was my status quo for probably a year or more haha but I'm glad that I finally got to sit down and take care of it!

We certainly never want to unexpectedly die but at the same time, things happen, accidents happen and even if we don't die, we may be incapacitated and leaving our family in a tough situation financially. There are always those situations but the most important thing is to make it easy for our family members if it does happen, to locate the information they need in order to fully process the impact and determine how to best move forward.

This is especially evident when you become a parent - you never want to willingly go into a situation for the kids where things are a mess and it takes quite a bit of stress and effort to figure all the different shit out. Too many people have been there and maybe from past experience professionally, I've been around that a little more than I would like so I make sure to bridge that unnecessary gap.

Having written the document a few years ago at this point, it was time for a good update and overhaul. I vividly remember writing the document - it was at a time where I had a pretty serious health scare. Thankfully it turned out to be nothing significant but the thought of where I was years ago, when my son was at a much more tender age, having to die and leave my wife to deal with everything on her own was an awful thing to have to bear. I wrote down as much information as I could, encoding it of course so that not just a random person could pick it up and understand what it meant, only my wife could, was such a relieving moment.

Equally relieving was sitting back down years later, just this past week, and going through the same document and making some updates to it. It was pretty wild looking at the old one, I could see where my hand was a little shaky having to write such a thing but it was important. Thankfully this time around, I was not in dire straits like I was then so things were much more legible. It felt good to go through the exercise and hoping that it is not needed, but if disaster strikes, my family has the ability to go into recovery mode and do what they need to do in order to keep putting one foot in front of the other.