I had to start a whole new life
But I managed to reinvent myself
Love notes from Siel is a newsletter about love, writing, and travel from me, Siel.
Dear friend —
Why is it that we so often put off doing — for years, even decades — things we know we really, really, should do? The majority of Californians, for example, have no disaster plan, despite a 99%+ chance of a major earthquake in the next 30 years. And 84% of us use unsafe passwords, despite constant news reports about hackers and security breaches.
Last week, I finally updated my passwords.
The password I was using wasn’t something ridiculously hackable like my birthday or qwerty, at least. It had numbers and symbols. But I was using that one password for almost everything, knowing full well I should come up with different ones. I also hadn’t updated that password in years, despite the fact that it could open up both my iCloud and Google Cloud — on which are saved pretty much my entire life.
The thing that makes changing passwords difficult: Changing passwords isn’t just about changing passwords — It’s about changing age-old habits. Meaning: The solution wasn’t to just switch to a new password and go on with my life. Rather, I had to start a whole new life, in which I had the habit of creating a different, difficult password for every single website as a matter of course.
But I managed to reinvent myself. I changed my password life. I got a password manager and came up with a passkey that would take centuries to crack and forced myself to memorize it. Then I cleared my internet cache, logging myself out of every account online. Now, every website prompts me to log in, which is a prompt for me to change my password.
Getting stuff done this week has been — taking longer.
I do feel more secure, however. Want to get on top of your own password situation? I recommend this guide from the New York Times — my subscription to which I finally changed the password after like five years — which takes you step by step through everything, starting with why you probably want a password manager and which password managers are best.
Of course, once you get started, you’ll start getting overwhelmed with all the internet security stuff beyond the passwords — the steps you need to take to really lock down, your online life. Last week I also deleted a lot of underused apps from my phone. Then I updated my phone’s passcode. I changed so many privacy settings on Instagram and LinkedIn: it’s a good thing I don’t have to deal with Facebook, which I abandoned years ago, and Twitter, which I left a little before it got renamed X. Social media companies have made it possible to have more privacy these days, but they haven’t actually made it easy — you really have to untick a lot of boxes to opt out.
I still don’t have a disaster preparedness kit. However, Barcelona is a lot less prone to earthquakes than Los Angeles —
Love,
Siel
Three links you might love — writers edition:
How much do writers actually earn? “What I can never understand is how, in this whole chain of people involved in selling books, the creator of the material, the person who came up with the idea, who sat down and wrote it often through sweat and tears, is paid the least out of everyone,” opines Anna Wharton.
When do I earn out? Use this online calculator to figure out how many books you need to sell to earn out your advance.
Being a celebrity ghostwriter is very inspirational, according to one professional ghostwriter. “Nothing makes you re-examine your relationship with ambition and vanity more than listening to very successful, good-looking people confess problems worse than your own.”
Loved this love note? Please heart and share it.