Part of me wants to roll my eyes… at myself.
Whenever anyone mentions Mercury going retrograde (as it did at the end of this week), I nod my head but secretly wince inside.
It seems a little too convenient to blame every technical and communication snafu on a celestial phenomenon that happens three or four times each year, affecting about 20% of the calendar.
Even so, as more and more logistical drama unfolded, I began to wonder if this were really the moment to unveil my Discover Your Story Quiz HERE.
The week began with a routine physical required as part of some bureaucratic paperwork I need to file.
I arrived ten minutes early only to find that files and authorizations hadn’t been sent.
It took an hour and forty minutes of calls and emails to sort things out until I was finally escorted into the examining room by a lovely nurse.
She soon realized, however, that she needed to clarify which blood tests she was supposed to order, and vanished for another 30 minutes.
When she returned, things went relatively smoothly.
Even so, with all the delays, this meant I left the office nearly four hours from when I had arrived.
Sharing the experience with one of my many spiritual (perhaps even “crackpot”) friends, she merely commented that nothing could be more “retroshade,” a term I hadn’t heard before.
Apparently, it refers to the shadow period before the retrograde — the time when tech gremlins really start working their mischief.
I am genuinely excited about the quiz (again HERE).
It grows from the larger work I’m developing about storytelling and empowering one’s personal narrative.
Themes of this were woven into my DailyOM event last month as well as in the Tell A New Story course I offered last year.
Fittingly for this month’s theme — Generosity, meditation HERE — in an attempt to make it a richer experience, I also made it exponentially more difficult for myself and my team.
The quiz and results are free, but for each of the seven archetypes—ranging from The Romantic to the Quest Seeker to the Monster Slayer—I created a mini-workshop (for $13).
Each offers a short video lesson on the archetype as well as a worksheet of specific journaling prompts.
Everything—including the follow-up emails—is tailored to the archetype, meaning it required seven times the amount of database and other coding.
Although the last U.S. manual cord switchboard in the Bell System was officially retired in 1983 in Connecticut, that’s exactly how I felt mid-project.
This feeling only intensified when, right in the middle of it all, the dreaded modern tech apocalypse struck: the wifi went out.
Unplugging and rebooting did nothing.
My phone revealed it was not an area outage.
The cable company determined they could do nothing on their end, either.
Resigned to using my phone as a hotspot, I scheduled the repairman for that classically broad two-hour window the next morning.
Obviously, the Retroshade was now in full force.
Supervising coding of autoresponders to the quiz, I mused further about that switchboard image, recalling the classic Broadway musical and film, Bells Are Ringing (1956).
I’d seen a brilliant production of it in college—one that years later the same director brought to Broadway—and always remembered its whimsical plot.
Ella, the female lead, is a switchboard operator at an answering service who gets involved in the lives of everyone she’s taking messages for, ultimately introducing an out-of-work actor, a playwright with writer’s block, and a dentist who yearns to compose music.
Embodying the spirit of generosity — again this month’s meditation theme HERE— protean networker Ella even has a number called “Is It A Crime?” to help others in need.
As you might expect, her efforts lead to a Mercury-retrograde level of plot entanglements before all the shenanigans work out in charming musical-comedy fashion.
The cable guy arrived and after a thorough inspection of the inside and outside wiring, informed me that we needed to call Eversource, the electrical company.
When I asked him what I should tell them — besides the fact that the cable was out — without a trace of irony, he replied:
You Need to Get Re-Grounded.
Since I was simultaneously halfway through recording the podcast I’m going to launch soon, I could only thank him and silently reply, “You have no idea.”
Here’s the amazing thing I learned this week about Bells Are Ringing: it was based on a true story.
Mary Printz established the Belles Celebrity Answering Service to cater to celebrity talent.
Her client list was actually truly extraordinary, and included (according to Wikipedia):
Stephen Sondheim, Steven Spielberg, Candice Bergen, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds, Brooke Shields, Liz Smith, Spencer Tracy, Kathleen Turner, Tennessee Williams, as well as members of the rock band Kiss.
There are stories of Mary Printz watering plants for clients, picking up laundry, arranging repairs with supers, and even getting bottles of Scotch to Noël Cowardwhen liquor stores were closed.
Although the answering machine cut into the business, Mary Printz still retained about 90 clients until her death in 2009 at the age of 85, proving that no technology can replace this level of epic generosity.
All of this reminded me very much of many passages in The Science of Getting Rich, both the Transformation Book Club’s read this month (you can join HERE) and also the source of the journal I’m beta-testing with a few hundred of you.
One of the author Wallace Wattles’ maxims is:
“Give every man more in use value than you take from him in cash value; then you are adding to the life of the world by every business transaction.”
Clearly, Mary Printz understood this on a deep level, not just answering the phones but giving so much to her clients they remained loyal.
Even though technology had moved on; they would not.
The next morning the Eversource repairman arrived.
He did his thing and left.
I texted the cable guy who returned to complete the job.
For now, all the circuits seem to be running smoothly.
(Fingers crossed).
I also believe all seven archetype pathways are appropriately coded with the right workshop links and the proper journaling prompts.
I’d even like to think that the scheduling link for the limited number of 1:1 consultswe’ve opened up will also work HERE.
I don’t regret making this offering more generous — and therefore much more complicated — than it might have been.
Given the choice, like my new role-model Mary Printz, as W. H. Auden wrote in his poem The More Loving One:
“If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”
Even in the thick of a full-blown retrograde, it’s never a mistake to be generous.