After it happened, I did a little research.
In the many thousands of Zoom meetings I’ve hosted or participated in, it’s never happened before.
Apparently, this specific glitch shows up less than 1% of the time, and most estimates put it closer to fractions of a percent.
The fact that it happened on the first day of this year, during my free January Reset Workshop — replay is HERE — seems more than a little uncanny.
Described as a “client-side display bug, not identity loss,” the phenomenon apparently unnerved only one person… ME.
Everyone who signed up for the workshop gave their name and email address in order to get the link, as usual.
Yet at the stroke of 3pm, when people began appearing in the online Waiting Room, every single person’s onscreen user ID was transformed by the Zoom User Interface to my name, “Edward Vilga.”
Suddenly, there were a dozen “Edward Vilgas” showing up, followed by another dozen.
I fumbled around for a moment trying to fix it before realizing it didn’t really matter.
I was offering a guided journaling experience, rather than one where participants were sharing directly.
Afterwards, I asked a friend who attended what she saw on her end.
She said her screen had no participant names at all, not even her own.
I, on the other hand, saw my own name — accompanied by very different faces from those who turned on video — several dozen times, as though in an online funhouse mirror.
The irony gets even deeper.
When I was chatting the next day with a therapist friend, she laughed and said it reminded her of Being John Malkovich, the surrealist fantasy comedy drama film — it’s deliberately hard to define — directed by Spike Jonze and written by Charlie Kaufman.
In brief, John Cusack plays a failed puppeteer who discovers an actual portal into actor John Malkovich’s mind.
I saw the movie when it first came out in 1999 and I remember vividly the scene where he embodies every character in a restaurant.
Here’s the thing: it’s actually on my list again to view this week.
I’ve been deep into the films of Charlie Kaufman — I watched Adaptation and Synecdoche, New Yorklast month — because something new that I’m writing demands similar structural mischief.
Although writers are in one sense always writing about themselves, for the first time I’m adding a character who is more directly me than ever before.
Yes, there’s a whole meta-layer to everything but I’m drawing on some direct experience.
At the same time, he’s definitely NOT me … we just happen to share a weird amount of narrative DNA.
All of it, though, still feels like a nudge from the universe towards the surreal and to greater self-exposure.
Soft launching several long-developing projects requires me to now end my quiet rebellion against social media.
It is — in a supremely annoying way — time to put myself “out there.”
Don’t get me wrong: there are parts of this that I’m genuinely looking forward to.
For example, I’m being interviewed in two weeks for a super-smart old friend’s stellar podcast.
I’m sure there will be the perfect mixture of real substance and delightful banter.
Even so, the writerly voice inside me can’t help but quote Emily Dickinson, wondering just what she’d make of the demands of modern publishing.
I’m Nobody
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Dont tell! they’d banish us – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell your name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
This month’s theme and meditation, by the way, are almost in direct contrast to all of the above talk of free-floating identity.
I’ve decided to focus on Embodiment, the idea that the body is not an obstacle to spirit, but its perfect vehicle.
In the Transformation Book Club — you can join for $5 a month HERE — this January, we’re reading The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor.
No less than Brené Brown says, “This book took my breath away. It’s an unexpected and urgent embrace of truth.”
I’m particularly interested in how transformation and reinvention have to be organically felt before they’re fully achieved in the world.
I’m delighted to share the new meditation on this topic with you HERE.
Despite its surreal beginning, let me be clear that I absolutely taught that January 1st workshop.
Replay available again:
In the workshop I took people through a series of journaling prompts to help define what they want to experience in 2026 and beyond.
Interestingly, unlike when I usually teach from slides, my floating image was not included in the recording.
Although I was the host, I am invisible.
It’s just my voice guiding you through some meditations and offering you some thought experiments to help let go of the past and shape the year ahead.
This double-glitch feels exactly like the spiritual truth taught in the Course in Miracles: that we are all one because separation is an illusion of the ego, and in truth there is only a single shared Mind expressing itself through many forms.
(Although I don’t think the course specifies that it’s necessarily John Malkovich.)
My tech research after the live workshop reveals that only a perfect storm could create this phenomenon of every guest having the host name, followed by the host being unseen in the recording.
Something to do with cached profile data, rapid participant entry, a recent Zoom update, and the fact that it’s much more likely to occur on a Mac than Windows.
It may just represent a new kind of reinvention, one where we see ourselves reflected everywhere and then dissolve back into unity.
Sometimes identity becomes unstable at the moment it’s required to be most visible.
(Or I may just need to update my browser.)
In any case, I encourage you to watch the replay HERE, and if you’re inspired, continue with the January Reinvention Course.
At the risk of being sales-y, yes, the Early Bird Pricing ends today… but, on the other hand — even when it feels like your entire identity is reflected back in funhouse mirrors, both scary and hilarious — the journey of transformation is eternal and infinite.
Tell A New Story. Transform Your Life.