The Tao of Glitches

I have been dealing with a lot of technological glitches recently. It started in December. Someone contacted me by email wanting to purchase a paperback copy of my book The Tao of Christ to give as a Christmas present. I directed them to Amazon. They informed me that it was no longer available on their US website. I checked it out, and sure enough, at some point the paperback version had been removed.

So I reached out to KDP Publishing. Seven weeks and countless emails and online chats later, it is still not available. They can’t seem to fix the problem. The ebook version is still available, but not the paperback. They won’t talk to me on the phone; email only. Yet they keep sending me emails congratulating me on having my paperback approved and saying it will be on the Amazon site in 48 hours. It never is. Not even after 48 days!

Also the security cameras around our house won’t stay online. We got them originally because someone was breaking into our home to steal our prescription meds. When the culprit was apprehended by the police, it turned out to be a local young man breaking into many homes multiple times. That threat is past, but we keep the outdoor cams to view wild animals that visit our yard. Yet we have continual trouble with three different brands of cams.

There is also our “smart” TV, which turns out not to be so smart. Neither are the apps for our favorite subscription channels BritBox and Acorn. The reliability of the internet is an additional problem, even though we recently got broadband in our neck of the woods. Don’t get me going about iPhones and rural cell phone coverage! And the GPS in our vehicle. Computers are the worst. The recording software I use for podcasts and videos is decidedly demonic (if I believed in that sort of thing).

Last week we had a package delivery glitch. FedEx delivered a package addressed to us to someone in a neighboring town. Apparently the house number was close enough (28 instead of 26), and the street name was similar enough (only one letter different), and “Lane” is not too different from “Street,” and the town was just a few miles away, and the zip code was only three numbers apart.

That was good enough for the driver. No need to drive an extra half hour to deliver it to the address on the label. After two hours on the phone trying to reach a human being at FedEx, we took the matter into our own hands. Through an online Google group for the neighboring town I hunted down the person who mistakenly received our package and arranged a time to drive a half hour over back roads to retrieve it.

Finally I have been having problems publishing this blog and getting it to people’s inbox reliably. The other day it did not go out at all. This time the problem was resolved pretty quickly, but it wasn't the first time, and I feared it would not be the last. So I am switching services. That is why you are reading this courtesy of Substack (unless there is another glitch). Tech is very glitchy.

It is not just tech. All areas of human society are glitchy. Government is glitchy. It is a safe bet that the federal government will become much glitchier in the coming weeks as federal agencies are dismantled and anyone with a working conscience is fired for disloyalty to Il Duce.

Our bodies are glitchy, especially as they age. So is the healthcare system. Relationships are glitchy. Family life is glitchy. The spiritual life is glitchy. Life is glitchy. That is my variation on the Buddha’s first Noble Truth.

The key to living the human life is not minding the glitches. As Saint Murphy said, “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong." That is not a threat; it is reality. Glitches are normal and natural. Being upset over inevitable problems just makes things worse. The spiritual life is about how we approach glitches. The key is to find the peace amidst the glitches. Glitchy peace.

And sometimes the glitches work themselves out. For example, I just received an email a moment ago saying that my paperback is published. (I am not kidding!) I didn’t believe it, so I checked the Amazon site to be sure, and it is true! So sometimes it all works out. Sometimes it doesn’t, and that is okay too. That is the Tao of Glitches.