I’m reflecting this morning on what happens when your world gets turned upside down. Mine got turned upside down last week when I was the victim of a very upsetting hack on my computer. Suffice it to say that I was so alarmed by the whole thing that I called the number popping up on my screen. Sigh. I then let someone into my computer for 30 minutes – through software – before I realized that I was being hacked.  Anyway, the point as it relates here is that I have been without my laptop for five days, and it was extremely disturbing and my whole world got turned upside down, but I have trained myself to sit back and say, okay, what can I do with this? Basically, making lemonade out of lemons.

I decided when this happened that I was going to spend the weekend filling myself with inspiration in any form that I could find. I have fallen into this whole podcasting thing. It’s completely new for me. It’s taking up a lot of my time and energy, in a really good way. It’s fun.  Yet it’s important to balance out the external focus. This weekend I was reminded that I’m filling my head up with all of this stuff out there, learning and groups and social media, all of these things that are new to me, and it was time to fill my own tank. When I say fill my own tank, I don’t mean sleep and rest. I excel at that. I find as I’m aging that sleep and rest is critically important to how I move in the world.

So this all happened on a Thursday night. I was scheduled to go to a lecture on Friday morning at 8:30 and I started talking myself out of it because of my computer issues. Then I caught myself and thought ‘no, this is exactly what I need to do.’ As I walked up the stairs at the Ethical Society of New York to go listen to Maria Papova . She’s an author, poet, and essayist, and she has a really famous blog called Marginalia (it used to be called Brain Pickings). As I walked up the steps, I saw a sign right at eye level on the floor that says “Everyone is creative’. I knew instantly that I had made the right choice to go there. There were a thousand people in the audience, and it was absolutely beautiful. So I surrendered the thought about my computer and all of the angsting and the noise dissipated. Then  I went to see two plays, I spent more time than usual listening to my audiobook, and I went by myself to see the movie The Fablemans. I felt really proud of myself that I turned this upsetting situation into a beautiful weekend of self-love. I gave myself permission to let it all go, and I turned it around.

I was thinking to myself ‘well, how did I learn how to do that?’  It’s a really good skill, and I’ll admit I’m not always good at it. What popped into my mind was that I have a condition I never talk about. It’s tinnitus. I have ringing in my ears. My mother suffered from the same thing. She had it quite bad. When I realized I had it too, I made a choice in that moment that I was not going to talk about it and focus on it and complain about it and worry about it. I decided I wanted to be curious. What happens is it comes and goes and when it gets really intense I always ask myself, what is it that my mother’s trying to tell me? It’s like a little game I play with myself. It stops me from getting all worked up.  I get curious about it. What is it that I’m supposed to be listening for?  Where is it that I’ve gone off course?

This hack made its way into my life.  After I made an Instagram post to tell the whole world about my computer mishap, I was like,’ ah, how boring am I going to let this ruin my whole weekend – and literally from one second to the next, I let it go and I ended up having the best weekend ever.

Sometimes you just need to look at what’s happening and say okay, I can spiral into complaining and feeling sorry for myself, or I can get curious or make a different choice and turn it around. I know that’s not always easy, but I’m just reminding you that we do sometimes have a choice to make. It’s to stop ourselves in our tracks and choose to go down a different road. I don’t know who needs to hear that today, but I thought I’d share it, for what it’s worth. I just had the best weekend ever.  I started the week fully inspired by all the amazing creativity I saw. That’s one of the things I really love about New York. It’s right outside the door, but you have to put on your coat and hat and get yourself out there.

That’s all for now. Until next time, from my heart to yours.