Monday was quite a day.
In fact, before 8 a.m., the stage was already fully set for drama.
Like 34.7% of U.S. households, I get the Post Office’s Informed Delivery service.
That means that every morning, I receive an email with scans of the exterior of all the letter-sized mail that’s on its way to me that day.
Therefore, shortly after dawn, I knew something was arriving from the IRS.
Although I suspected it was probably related to my 501(c)(3) nonprofit application, it was hard not to imagine an ominous tone.
Secondly, although “The Big Reveal” hasn’t happened yet for my mom’s Etsy store — there are still way too many things I haven’t listed — I also awoke to notifications that two sales had come in from total strangers.
Most significantly, I also received a flurry of emails from Sitelock — a cloud-based security tool — and my web hosting service that all three of my business and project sites were infected with malware.
Everything had crashed.
There are some interesting facts about malware.
For example, in its earliest stages (like the 1971 first-ever virus The Creeper), it was about curiosity and bragging rights, evolving into modern malware that is usually about money, politics, and power grabs.
And yes, even with good tech teams who are very reassuring, it often takes up a shocking amount of time to restore things to normal.
This entire adventure was a true test of the August theme of Adapting — meditation HERE.
Everything I’d planned for the week had to be completely rearranged or postponed.
What struck me most strongly, however was the irony that I had just undertaken two different 30-day mindset challenges, each designed to, more or less, clear the “malware of my mindset.”
Although hardly auspicious, this seemed like a very telling start.
Mid-bubblewrapping the Etsy purchases, the IRS letter arrived.
Astonishingly, the tone was warm, even friendly.
It begins:
Dear Applicant:
We’re pleased to tell you we determined you’re exempt from federal income tax under Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 510(c)(3).
(Just FYI: Beyond a mere triumph of paperwork, the nonprofit will be the umbrella for various educational and artistic projects I’ve been envisioning.)
Even though several hours of the day were spent simultaneously on speaker phone with Sitelock while DMing both my tech guy and the hosting service, there was another unexpected bright spot.
I had the final session with one of my favorite creative clients who’s completing a series of five children’s books.
To my delight — and without even the vaguest suggestion from me — Vlad made his way into one of them, apparently fulfilling a forgotten wish of Frustrated Freddy, pictured below.
There’s my guy in the upper left corner, flying in to save the day. Red really is his color.
Removing the malware and establishing firewalls (plus a lot of other tech stuff I can only vaguely process) took several days.
Like most real spiritual growth, an easy fix doesn’t do it.
Since the malware problem not only required 90% of my attention but also made the next-step outreach work impossible, there was plenty of time for inner work.
I couldn’t help but recall Pema Chödrön’s bracing line that:
“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
When I received a support ticket with the subject line that my problem had been “Escalated to Engineering,” I re-read the full passage:
“If we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive.
It just keeps returning with new names, forms, manifestations until we learn whatever it has to teach us about where we are separating ourselves from reality, how we are pulling back instead of opening up, closing down instead of allowing ourselves to experience fully whatever we encounter, without hesitating or retreating into ourselves.”
Sometimes, a deep clean is needed.
Back to Vlad in that cape…
For both creative projects and for general life reinvention, I have a few coaching openings for the fall.
These sessions vary enormously.
Sometimes, as with the children’s book above, it’s fine-tuning rhymed couplets or asking penetrating plot questions about the fairy’s magic chest.
Other times, it’s getting to the root of procrastination or really defining someone’s zone of genius for their next chapter.
If you’re interested in the possibility of working with me, you can answer a few questions and set up a free discovery call.
As my tech nightmare revealed, sometimes all of us really need some skilled support to move through the mental malware.
It’s a weird feeling when you’re facing tech battles.
On the one hand, it’s not like you’re trapped in a coal mine, but on the other, you can feel utterly powerless and silenced.
I want to share a few things that helped me get through the week.
One is this poem by Derek Mahon, one that helps put everything in perspective.
Everything is Going to Be All Right
How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The lines flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.
Of course, music always helps a lot.
I’m a huge fan of the pianist Simone Dinnerstein and her new album, Complicité.
In particular, the final work on the album, a brilliant adaptation (even perhaps a recomposition) of the Air on the G String of Bach’s third Orchestral Suite by Philip Lasser.
It seems the perfect finale not only for the album but for this month’s theme of Adapting.
As Dinnerstein said in a recent interview:
The strings are playing the original air on the G string in its entirety, the way Bach wrote it.
And I’m playing Philip’s piece, which is completely related to it, but also an independent entity.
And the combination of those two things is really, I think, pretty otherworldly.
Indeed, it’s both perfectly classical and a jazz improvisation, “a lens through which we see Bach’s music in a new light.”
You can listen to it on Spotify HERE.
Perhaps most importantly, every time I listen to it, it renews the feeling of Derek Mahon’s poem, reminding me that somehow the light always manages to break through.
The album cover is a painting by Dinnerstein’s father who used an old palette as a basis for creating a new painting of daisies…another triumph of adaptation.
As of this writing, it seems like we are mostly out of the tech woods.
Although there are still a few permissions that might need to be reconfigured, the sites are all live again.
(Fingers crossed).
In fact, they are now faster and more streamlined.
Finally, in a supremely ironic twist, when I went to the Poetry Foundation’s website last night to learn more about Derek Mahon’s work, the page would not load.
Refusing to reveal its content, it simply froze.
This morning, however, it’s back online.
I’m not sure if anyone on their tech team or mine — unlike Vlad — when performing heroic acts like rescuing data and defeating digital demons actually wears a cape.
Yet I am nonetheless more certain than ever before that “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”
Although the malware of our minds can be the most insidious of all, the prognosis isn’t always negative.
Sometimes even the IRS has good news it’s “pleased to share” with us.
Despite the occasional cyber attack, as the poet reminds us, “the sun rises in spite of everything,” and if we can adapt — meditation HERE — perhaps in the end everything really is going to be all right.
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