The Secret (of my success)

Of all the interesting things the psychic told me, one piece of news that would have been helpful was that, late at night on Friday, our office was broken into and my laptop stolen.

I came into work this morning and was greeted by the receptionist and the cleaning crew, who are usually long gone well before business hours. The burglar had climbed in through an open window; we're on the second floor, but the rooftop of the shorter, adjacent building served as a simple step-stool. He didn't get too far before our motion sensors set off the alarm; he left a trail of items that he was clearly considering taking, but the only thing he made off with was my computer. I hope he is wowed by my way with words: I have four-plus years of press releases, pitch letters, and marketing copy immortalized on that thing.

Fortunately, most of the information is at least moderately retrievable. I've backed up my system, not recently, but enough. What's not saved elsewhere as a document is likely retrievable on the web. I'll have to spend some serious hours rebuilding my media lists, but the work will mostly be technical - the information is ingrained in my brain.

There is irony in the fact that while most of the office saves to the server (which would be backed up) my business travel is frequent enough that I only to save to my hard drive. And wouldn't you know it? I'm traveling to New York tomorrow. I'm throwing a cocktail party at the Spa on Thursday night for 50-60 people. Before that, I'm meeting with beauty editors to introduce new products. What's more, I was actually supposed to be traveling to Scottsdale this week, for an event I have planned there on Thursday, but the New York trip took precedence and also tripled my workload.

It wasn't the best week to lose my laptop.

However, I do believe in looking at the positive. For one, it was only my work laptop. It was only work. Thank God my home is safe and my personal possessions are mine. (Even though I absentmindedly slept with the keys dangling out of my door on Saturday night. I can be stupid. But awfully lucky.) Two, I got to see a forensics team in action today. Dusting for prints in our office! Who ever gets to see that? (And have it not be a traumatic experience?)

But one of the things I think is funny is that I have been needing a new laptop for a while. Last week, I finally voiced my need to our IT guy, but didn't have the time to follow up on making a formal request. Fast-forward to today, I lose my old laptop, and was greeted with a brand new one in it's place. I'm not sure of the exact details, but someone ordered this computer a month ago, it wasn't what they wanted, the company had no record of sending it, and so we basically got a new one for free. It's been sitting around, waiting to be used.

One of the most persistent themes of my reading, which was also significant last year, was that I am highly attuned to the spiritual realm: according to both clairvoyants, I am extremely intuitive (stop, you're making me blush!) and should be honing the ability to connect with the other side. The woman on Saturday made a big point of saying that my purpose in this life is to to encourage my "knowingness," and know that I have the power to manifest anything I want.

Wouldn't it be funny if, just by voicing my half-hearted complaint last week, I managed to manifest myself a brand new computer?

A few weeks ago, I remember asking HR if we were going to close early. It must have been that Thursday before Memorial Day, because I knew we'd close early on Friday but due to various travel schedules, there were only a handful of us in the office the day before. He said no, and I went back to work. An hour later, the management company rings our bell and tells us we have to vacate by 5:00 because they were shutting off the water for the night. The few of us left in the office joked that, eager beaver that I was, I must have orchestrated the whole thing.

And who knows. Maybe I did.