A few seconds ago, I logged into this very space to write a new post and there was a message, which was pretty much this:

“Hey, Lis, WordPress 54.3 is available. Do you want to upgrade now?”

Feeling somewhat conform-ational, I went ahead and hit ‘ok’.

Then I was looking at a message that warned me that I should – which I took as undue pressure accompanied by a hint of shaming – back up my database, and also that my site would be in ‘maintenance mode’ for the entire time I was updating WordPress.

Huh.

Well that sounded a little bit… shall we say… less than.

It was far too much to process first thing in the morning, so I punted on the whole upgrade thing for now.

Sadly, this means you are experiencing this post on an, apparently, inferior version of WordPress. So if it bites or otherwise harms you, it will be because of a bug that WordPress probably fixed in Version 54.3, but their maintenance mode threats unnerved and overwhelmed me to the point of being unable to upgrade and to protect you.

I’m wicked sorry.

But it did get me to thinking (which is shocking, I know)… about maintenance modes.

And ‘upgrades’.

You know how sometimes you hit “Ok” on an upgrade for something – say, your phone – and you wait an eternity for that bar to finish moving from left to right, and it finally gets there and the phone rests… and nothing noticeable changes? Like, it looks the same and acts the same and you wonder if the download/upgrade thing even worked? That doesn’t mean that a whole heap hasn’t changed way down deep inside the dang phone.

Take it from someone who once worked with and around some pretty amazing technological magicians, those upgrades, most upgrades actually – don’t result in a whole lot of visible, new and exciting bells and whistles.  They often have everything to do with what you have…  simply being able to continue to work.

Because the technological world is constantly shifting and morphing, and our devices need to be tweaked and plucked and otherwise ‘upgraded’, lest they be left behind in a digital world that moved on.

Or, you know, become broken.

Sound… applicable?

So here’s the thing.

For all of us who have stepped back…

Are taking stock…

Pulled inward…

Feel a little bit ‘off-line’, even if we appear ‘on line’… showing up for our everydays, but maybe yearning to put a sign around our necks, with a user friendly message that says something like, “Down for maintenance, will return soon with some exciting new superpowers!”…

It makes so much sense right now…

To feel a bit… glitchy.

Inconsistant.

Pissy.

Prone to breaking down.

And yet… we’ll get there.

To our next versions, I mean.

We’re each doing all kinds of our own work behind the scenes – processing… tweaking… testing… debugging. Figuring out how to be us in a world that feels like an alien planet at times. This is not a cakewalk, people. Upgrades don’t just happen. In fact, sometimes they’re really hard.

Ask a phoenix.

I know, I know. It all sounds daunting… it all feels daunting.

And, unlike said mythical bird, when we each choose to emerge from our maintenance modes, the shifts and changes in our souls and selves may never be noticed by the world.

But we will have chosen what to keep and/or add, and tweak and/or jettison, from what we’ve learned.

We are the architects of our selves and souls.

It is our ever-present incredible opportunity, and our lifelong project and responsibility, to revisit the whos and whats and wheres and whens and whys and hows of our beings as the wider world offers its challenges, hopes, threats, wonders, and everything in between.

Because who we are is the foundation for all we can offer each other.

Thanks for readin’.

Comments and shares are always appreciated, and you can do that right here (well, not, like, RIGHT here… down there. See?). You can also join fellow ponderers over on the Just Ponderin’ Facebook page (there’s a bit of extra stuff too – from photos to observations to conversations. C’mon over any time!)