The current snowpocalypse has not been fun. While each of us here at The Northerner love our jobs, the weather and other factors have made this a difficult week. And for me it all began with illness.

Over the weekend, I had gotten food poisoning. For the sake of sparing myself some embarrassment, I’m going to leave out those details. Even when every fiber of my being told me not to go to school on Monday and Tuesday, I still went to school for as long as I could.

As I’m writing this, I find myself still a little queasy but able to keep myself together. I was still planning on making the drive to NKU, just like I did on Monday and Tuesday, when I got the call that school had been closed today (Wednesday Feb. 5).

In retrospect, I probably should have taken that as a sign to just let myself finish my recovery.

However, I didn’t and my car swerved into a ditch on my way to school, about a quarter of a mile after leaving my house.

I should probably mention that the road I live on has grown accustomed to being left untouched by plows.

In actuality, it probably took less than ten seconds for my car to go from the road into that ditch, but to me it felt like hours. The tires didn’t seem to respond to the turning of the steering wheel, and I felt panic overtake me. There’s something about being in a ditch that’s just plain soul crushing. You try to remember what you did to put yourself into the ditch, but often times you can’t recall. Sometimes, you can push yourself out, but more often than not it makes the situation worse.

About twenty minutes later, my step dad pulled me and my car out of the ditch and aside from a few scratches, my car is fine because it wasn’t going to win any car shows anytime soon anyway.

Until today, I’ve never really had an opinion on snow. Snow days were nice when I was a kid, but I could have taken them or left them. Now I think that it helps us reflect on ourselves. When a snowstorm hits and we’re trapped in our homes, we try not to think about the work or school we’re missing. Instead, we try to focus on ourselves and trying to take advantage of the unexpected free day.

I didn’t try to do that today. Instead of trying to get over the last of my food poisoning like I should have on Monday and Tuesday, I tried to make it to school and quite possibly could have totalled my car in the process.

Sometimes, we get exactly what we need and we just don’t recognize it at first. I think that the Rolling Stones said it best with their song “You can’t always get what you want.” Not every situation is going to work out for the best, but sometimes a different point of view can make it seem a little better.