NOT the morning I was expecting…
“It is well with my soul…”
“Man plans, God laughs” -Yiddish folk saying
Yesterday I had an experience of what I call “Existential Friction”. I came up with that term to label a certain facet of reality that everyone experiences, but that creative leaders face more than most. It’s a facet of reality that I often coach my clients through, and today I encountered it in a big way. What surprised me is how much self-doubt it created. That was actually the worst part.
This has become something else I have a label for, “Narrative Trauma”. My clients deal with that too. I help with these problems because I experience and understand them myself. Let me tell you about it.
Yesterday morning I woke up with a clear plan. It was going to be a full, busy, exacting day, but overall a good one. I was really excited about pretty much all of it. The Existential Friction that I encountered dampened that considerably though, and I’m still reeling from it a bit. Here’s the story…
At a networking group I often attend we were encouraged to unveil something big and new, and I was ready to do it (more on that later).
Then I needed to deal with our background check provider and run a couple checks on prospective teachers for our music school.
Then I needed to write and submit program notes for our local symphony orchestra. I always put those off until the last minute!
Then I needed to drop a couple of my books (https://aaronjmarx.com/book-1/p/the-complete-science-of-human-dynamics & https://aaronjmarx.com/book-1/p/seeking-completion-the-hidden-layers-beneath-all-human-social-interactions) in the mail for people.
Then I needed to go to the bank and put some bills in the mail at the post office. I’m getting on the bills earlier than usual this month because I’m going out of town soon, and it feels good to get that squared away.
Then I needed to take a walk in my local nature preserve and charge my EV. It’s convenient - there’s a fast charge station there and the walk is good for body, mind, and soul.
Then I needed to write a post-session client email.
Then I needed to run my kids from school to home to swim practice at the Y.
Then I needed to put bowings in the music I am playing for a rehearsal this evening.
And that would be the end of the day. While it’s a busy day, I was expecting it to run pretty smoothly. Sometimes you can show up to your days and go with the flow. It’s a pretty good feeling. The rehearsal would take me up to dinner and bedtime. It was going to be really smooth and easy.
Today is essentially a free Saturday, after publishing this (although that wasn’t part of the original plan). My wife and I are going to take a fall color ride at a local ski hill (it’s a way to use the chairlifts off season - very popular) and then have a nice meal out. We don’t get dates very often.
Sunday is the concert we’re rehearsing for tonight.
It was all planned out. Easy as that.
Well, until this morning. The disruption was dramatic and overwhelming.
I was pretty excited about the day. I slept well and woke up at 3:00. I was awake. I turned on some brown noise and stayed in bed until my alarm went off at 5:00.
I made some coffee and recycled the dishwasher, which is one of my favorite morning chores.
I listened to Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue on loop and review some of the texts I was reading (the program notes).
I exchanged a bit with ChatGPT - that was for the presentation at the networking group - a special touch that I was really excited about.
I was about to leave the house, bring my son to school, and continue on to networking when I looked at my phone and saw an email that gave me slight intuitive turbulence.
It was a failed renewal notice domain that we don’t use for a website, but that is connected to the Google admin for our music school. I had seen a similar notice from the previous day, but figured I had a little more time to deal with it. Apparently I was mistaken.
After dropping my son off I looked more closely at the email and realized that our music school email, phone system, and Google Drive was all suspended until the expired card was updated. That’s a considerable portion of our system in that operation. There’s really no communication possible in or out without all that.
Great…but I hardly ever log in to the admin account. K. Keep cool. Maybe you’ll remember the login credentials.
I was immediately stressed. I knew there were some inquiries in the inbox, not to mention the notes I leave each day for our office manager in Google Drive, and anyone who was planning to contact us to cancel or reschedule lessons, either students or teachers. Ulp.
Still early in the day. You can still head this off.
I was captive in the car for 10 minutes, stewing in my anxiety, which is really just one of the worst times to be alive. Fortunately I like to get places early and knew I would have a good 15 minutes to start figuring this out.
I arrived, parked, and wasted no time. I wasn’t planning to bring my laptop to networking, but there isn’t a better tool for this kind of thing. I grabbed a table at the coffee shop and tried to be as friendly as possible to the people I knew while remaining focused on this new and incredibly urgent problem.
See, here’s the thing. Our music school is the foundation of our life. When it’s going well I feel good, secure, at peace. When it’s not, I don’t. Its success permits me the freedom to do everything else, including writing things like this. So I don’t mess around with it. I take it seriously and quickly jump in to solve problems efficiently and effectively when necessary.
When it feels threatened my mind goes to uncomfortable places. It forecasts doom and gloom. I don’t know why, but I also know I’m not the only one. Many of you who are reading this can relate.
The Google system of the music studio is a labyrinth of domains, accounts, and passwords. We’ve changed names, domains, email addresses over the years. Google is flexible, but that’s sort of a double edged sword. It follows you through all the organizational twists and turns you can throw at it, but that also means it’s in your best interest to hold onto the string so you can retrace your steps when you need to. And I don’t always hold the string.
So I have to sit down, focus, and make my best guess.
Expired card. Where do I log in?
The domain is noteworthycw.com.
That’s not the domain of the current website. That’s becomenoteworthy.com.
Okay… Is it…director@noteworthycw.com? No.
Is it…office@noteworthycw.com? No.
Do I use one of the other email addresses? No.
What if I recover the email address? No, not on the list.
I have easily a dozen GMail addresses from various projects over the years, BTW.
Okay, I think I might have transferred the admin status to a new domain somewhere a little ways back, but the root admin domain could still be noteworthycw.com.
Let’s try…director@becomenoteworthy.com. Oh, that might be it! Google says it recognizes that as an admin login. This was an incredible victory, BTW.
K, password…
I tried everything I could think of. Every typical password and every combination of capitals, numbers, special symbols. Nada.
By this time the networking meeting had started. I put my laptop away and stewed in my anxiety more. I was nervous for this presentation. It’s a bold new idea and I don’t always read the crowd very well. Fortunately I wasn’t talking much - I was letting ChatGPT do most of the talking (you can have ChatGPT read things out loud). I think it was effective; people were listening closely.
My presentation concluded.
Back to the pressing problem at hand.
How was I going to solve this? Ask Google to recover the password? It said that could take up to a week, and it required me to answer a ton of questions about the profile, last payment, card on file, etc. I really wasn’t feeling that.
Business hours approacheth.
How do we get through the day?
We can still do email blasts through Constant Contact - that’s not tied to Google and we can see who opened it; people just can’t reply. What do we say? Do we need to set up a new Google Voice number? Not ideal. Use another email address? Once you introduce that, even once, you contaminate the system; people will use that email address for years. I really didn’t want that.
C’mon, think. Try something else.
At this point I had my laptop out in the networking meeting, which I didn’t like either. It meant I wasn’t listening very closely to the other people, which is disrespectful. Again, the music studio has to work.
C’mon, think!
Okay, one more version of a password I often use for studio stuff. Let’s try it without any special characters or numbers.
OMG. Is that it?
It IS.
I’m in.
Thank you merciful lord, thank you.
Update the card. Pay the invoice.
Test the email again.
It worked. Hallelujah. It worked.
All before 9:00am.
And I had been mentally preparing for WEEKS of complication. But it really only took an hour of my day, and it was an hour when nothing was happening anyway. There are literally only 55 minutes between the text messages I sent to our office manager announcing the problem and the solution. She may not have even seen the first before the second.
Funny, right? I was forecasting and inhabiting this expansive and terrifying inner landscape of dread. Torturing myself. Preparing for the worst.
But that wasn’t even the worst part.
The worst part? It was the self-doubt and negative self talk.
If there was a way to get down on myself about any part of the process I’m pretty sure I found it.
“You didn’t set up the systems right. [Other person that you compare yourself to] would have done it better, would have thought it through right from the start, would have done the right research to figure that out.”
“You’re a systems thinker and your systems are flawed! What business do you have giving advice on systems?”
“Your music studio is going to get all mucked up and you won’t be free anymore. You’ll have to spend all of your time running the music school and your life will recess and regress.”
“You’re a consultant and you can’t even run your own business. What business do you have doing this?”
Truly. All of this over the course of an hour. The terror of chaos, and the torment of self judgment, which I mistook for judgment from others. But there was no judgment from others because no one even knew what was going on.
Then, not even an hour later, I solved the problem.
Do you what happened after that?
Peace. Silence. Tranquility.
My fear abated completely and the negative self-talk evaporated instantly. Gone. Only the memory. The feelings vanished without a trace and I became my happy, self-confident self again.
And the day was mine again.
Free.
And with a great new story to tell (see “Narrative Trauma” below), this very story, which quickly became a new item on my to-do list, which has extended into Saturday morning. That’s really all that it ended up adding to my future. So, I guess you could say it was actually a net gain?! That’s funny and counterintuitive. I feel like there might be another term to coin for whatever that is 🤔
Something, isn’t it? I know many of you reading can relate to this on many levels. Because it’s part of life, and especially so for creative leaders. Because reality is full of systems that break down, as much as we try to prevent it. We can’t, because the world is not a perfect place, and systems are going to break down. The only alternative is to not build in the first place, but then we’re entirely at the mercy of other people who DO build. The only way out is through, and that’s what leadership is. And your systems are going to break down from time to time. Some of my clients are master systems builders, and even theirs aren’t perfect. They’re also constantly subject to alteration and adaptation as organizations morph and expand, which is inevitable. Also, systems are run by people who are anything but perfect. Systems are one of the ways that we address human imperfection, but they’re created by imperfect humans in an imperfect world, which means that they can’t ever be perfect either.
Systems are breaking down all the time. Like, all the time. Usually we don’t notice it, because we’re on the outside being served. But it’s torment to see it happen and deal with it from the inside. You feel like everyone is watching you. In reality, people are just waiting to get on to their next thing and they quickly forget too once their problems are solved. Yes, maybe some people would have had emails returned to sender, and maybe a couple even did. But, you know what? It happens. It happens to all of us. We know this and we show grace to the organizations to which it happens.
Even through the agitation and anxiety of this episode, I saw another part of my spirit and psychology operating. And I knew it was correct, even if iI didn’t believe it.
A still, small part of me was saying “It is well with my soul.”
It will be okay. You’ll get through this. You’ll figure it out. And I bet you’ll actually do it pretty quickly, because that’s what you do.
Yes, that was there.
I remember a coach I once worked with sharing one of her mantras: “I AM POSITIVELY EXPECTING GREAT RESULTS, NO MATTER WHAT I SEE IN FRONT OF ME. THE UNIVERSE IS REARRANGING ITSELF FOR MY BEST INTEREST RIGHT NOW.”
She said she would repeat that when breakdown seemed inevitable. And then things would work out.
That wasn’t the version I used yesterday. I’m pretty sure it was the more Christian-tinged “It is well with my soul”. They aren’t really that different and likely have a similar, if not identical, effect.
Part of our minds don’t believe it, but I think part of them also do, and much of the trick of mindset is finding and amplifying that little part. As they say, it seems still and small. The peaceful eye of the storm in your mind. Apparently we need both parts in there. It’s an analogy for what happens on the outside. Systems and agreements threaten breakdown, balancing, as they must, so many moving parts and competing agendas. But something persistent and constant pushes us through to the finish line, whatever we’re working through.
It’s when we forget the peace that we give up and give in. I’m glad I didn’t. Once I finally guessed the password everything was calm. Well, no, that’s not quite right. Because part of me was already calm. And you have it too, whatever you are dealing with.
And yesterday was a good day. Everything else still happened. With the valuable addition of a new story to share with you.
It is well with my soul.
—
Download the complete chapters of my first book from which the following passages are taken here.
A couple relevant paragraphs from my first book, The Complete Science of Human Dynamics, about Existential Friction. Systems breakdown is part of what I call “Existential Friction”:
“Human LIFE is hard. The experience is unremitting and highly pressing. This is due to a number of factors. The first is entropy and the unidirectional arrow of time which causes unceasing disorder in all of the systems upon which we rely for comfort and stability. That’s the metaproblem. Nature presses upon us and we have our being in the Realm of LIFE. There is the ongoing and endless need to nourish, groom, and rejuvenate our bodies. This demands systems of agriculture, sanitation, and architecture, which ultimately creates the society that we saw unfold as we explored the Realm of LIFE, all in response to the persistent reality and burden of our physical embodiment. As a social species, we trade the elemental trauma of nature for the societal trauma of the citadel, which occurs constantly as we live together as imperfect, imperfectable beings and damage each other psychologically and spiritually in the process (Narrative Trauma). Living as a society has its own kind of inescapable friction and trauma. Food must be produced. We must be sheltered against the elements. Our injuries and illnesses must be treated. Our waste products must be routed away from our living spaces. To meet each others’ needs we must work together to form systems of commerce and governance, the IDEAL forms of which we continue to seek through ongoing, open-ended, and often ideologically charged discussions. The Narrative Traumas of the distant and recent past create political and economic turmoil which often forces us to make and signal difficult calls on controversial topics that risk offending or alienating people we wish not to - society constantly and inescapably forces these choices upon us and even abstaining from such signaling itself sends the lukewarm signals of centrism, divisive and distasteful in its own way, as we strive to keep peace and maintain some semblance of atomized individuality. And upon working out the infrastructure and politics we must continue to find meaning and stimulation, often through the very means of building the system itself, but also by adding upon it interpretive layers like art, storytelling, philosophy, and religion. And we all DO this together. It never stands still. This is Existential Friction, and it can be highly overwhelming, particularly to those with fragile and sensitive souls. And it’s exacerbated by the fact that everyone else is also driven by this experience of Existential Friction, compelled to take ACTIONs in each and every moment, and traumatizing one another in the process, particularly if they are unaware of these highly volatile and often harmful underlying metaphysical mechanisms.” (p. 114)
The story I just told, by which you draw pleasure and meaning from my discomfort, and I gain benefit from sharing it, is called “Narrative Trauma”. It’s one of the very important ways that we process the past and envision a better future:
“To me, the beauty of Narrative Trauma is that it finds profound meaning, even beauty and inspiration in, and gratitude for, our trauma, which we all seem to agree is true on a very real level, and so we can continue to procreate with a clear conscience, passing on the sublime tragedy of our inheritance.
Narrative Trauma is abundant and ubiquitous. At certain levels we call it “gossip”. That’s a form of Narrative Trauma. At other levels we call it a “mission statement”. That’s another form of Narrative Trauma. All origin stories are rooted in Narrative Trauma. All constitutions and parliamentary procedures are created in response to and with the aim of avoiding traumas we have experienced. All institutions, political boundaries, rules and regulations are in place due to some kind of response to Narrative Trauma - the desire to make changes and enact structures and guidelines to avoid the displeasure and frustration of past experiences. Human society consists entirely of the signals and clues of past traumas and discomforts. Entirely. Every mechanical feature, decorative detail, and procedural jot and tittle is the result of some trauma somewhere at sometime that motivated someone to innovate or control something in some way shape or form.” (pp. 108-109)
To read these and other passages, purchase The Complete Science of Human Dynamics here: https://aaronjmarx.com/book-1/p/the-complete-science-of-human-dynamics
Read more about my thoughts on systems in my new book, Seeking Completion available for purchase here: https://aaronjmarx.com/book-1/p/seeking-completion-the-hidden-layers-beneath-all-human-social-interactions