Today, I want to give you a little window into my creative process.
As I determine what topic to write about each week, I look for signs.
Topics usually show themselves in 3’s – 3 different exchanges with the same theme.
My husband is probably rolling his eyes right now and will soon be commiserating with my kids as they all say something like, “She’s getting weirder, right?”
I will admit that constantly looking for signs and themes involves a little bit of “magical thinking” on my part and this may seem weird for an adult.
But I say, Why is magical thinking only for little kids? – the more I tap back into it, the happier I seem to get.
OK fine, it is a little weird.
If you are thinking, the next time you run into me, I might be rummaging through a dumpster talking to myself, ease your mind, I’m still pretty “with it”.
I think.
So this week, I had many signs come to me in the form of tech trouble.
Every which way I turned, my phone, computer, Ipad – you name it, were misbehaving.
Let’s just say, it all culminated on Tuesday with an hour at the Apple store around lunch-time and ended with a water logged phone pulled out of the toilet around 8pm.
Thank God, the toilet water was clean.
At least there’s that.
Needless to say, there have been many moments of me beating my head against the wall and LOADS of wasted time trying to fix stuff I barely know how to use in the first place.
My tech savvy husband sort of wants to strangle me…even more than usual.
This 1st world problem has caused great frustration and many negative thoughts to camp out in my brain this week.
But never fear, the “master spinner” is here – that’s what my close friend calls me because she thinks I can shift almost any negative experience into a positive one.
Now that I write this, it might be her nice way of saying I’m sort of delusional.
Some of those negative thoughts this week are: “Technology hates me. I suck at technology. How can I possibly run a productive business if I’m such a moron with technology”.
As a “master magical thinking spinner” or “delusional future dumpster diver” however you view it, I look for a bigger “why” when life throws me curve balls.
Why is all my tech malfunctioning? Why did I need for this to happen to learn whatever I am meant to learn right now?
What is the lesson? What do I need to learn right now?
This is what my magical thinking brain spun:
Right now, I am meant to get back to basics. I am meant to interact with people live rather than being so dependent on all things technological and existing mostly in the virtual world.
Like in real life.
And coincidentally or not, several opportunities are showing up for live workshop collaborations and events right now and that sure seems like another sign.
And as a mom, the tech theme is playing out as well…more unplugged time together is needed amongst my people.
By hearing the message and choosing not to shoot the messenger, changes are happenin’.
This morning we agreed as a family to put our cell phones in the glove compartment as an extra measure to avoid distracted driving.
OK, truth be told…I decided on it and after communicating the reasons why it’s necessary and so important, everyone else begrudgingly agreed to the new plan.
The family rule is that if the driver can’t text, it’s disrespectful for anyone else to do so.
I want to have conversation and listen to the radio together rather than feel like a lonely taxi driver.
This is the beauty of bringing magical thinking back into your life as an adult.
It helps the focus shift from blame and despair, “Why me?” to hope and improvement for myself and my family.
With that being said, if you emailed me and didn’t hear back, change my old “apparent coaching” email to randi@randirubenstein.com and gimme another shot.
I guess this lesson was big enough that it had to test all of our patience.
Sorry for dragging you into this and thanks for understanding.
A phone in the toilet…bananas?!?!
