Presto Magic

5/17/25

“I’ve got the magic in me. Every time I touch that track, it turns into gold. Everybody knows I’ve got the magic, magic, magic… m-magic, magic, magic… ahhh-wooo. I got the magic in me!” Ahhh just such a beautiful banger pulled from the Pitch Perfect viewing last evening. The song is still stuck in my head but I’m not mad about it. I don’t want it to fill my ego, but it does encapsulate how I’m feeling right now. I’ve got the magic. I can feel it. I can feel my powers strengthening. The more I surrender, the more I release, the more I receive. It’s a beautiful experience, being on the receiving end like this. I wouldn’t say that “I’ve got the magic in me.” I’d adjust it to say, “I’ve got the magic flowing through me.” I don’t want to take credit for the magic… not really. If there’s any credit that I deserve, it’s just opening up to the magic by surrendering my own ego. Listening to the Source and making the choice to follow. If there’s any credit I deserve, that would be it. Transforming my body, my being from a controlling know-it-all into a surrendered vessel. I let the magic flow through me, by letting go of the idea of “me”. I stop seeing myself as separate. I recognize my Oneness. I release my Attachments. These perspectives & their follow-up behaviors are all interconnected. I’m dropping the walls between myself and other people. I’m personally destroying the barriers that I’ve constructed between myself and the world. These hindrances simply don’t exist anymore. I’m blocking nothing. I’m open to everything. I’m afraid of nothing. I’m loving to everything. The rat(s) that’s scurrying through our kitchen. Am I afraid of his presence? Am I afraid of what he might do to me? Am I all-consumed by this fear? Am I going to let it prevent me from cooking dinner? There’s been times this week where the answer has been “Yes”. And, now I see, that’s what I’ve meant when I’ve said, “This rat’s got our number.” He’s successfully thrown me off-center. (Although I’m not sure “successfully” is the right word here. I don’t believe he holds this malicious intention. I believe he’s probably just searching for some food. He’s not actually trying to bother us. He’s just hungry. However, creating this perspective that he’s trying to f*ck with me makes it easier for me to justify trying to kill him. It generates a hatred towards him. Suddenly, I’m feeling the call to reach back out to my former employer and explain what happened here. It wasn’t insider trading, even though all the evidence points to that. It was far simpler than that. I had text messages with founders and people at the firm that were private. I didn’t want to expose those people and what they said to me without their consent. I didn’t want to blow up their lives because I made the choice to come forward and own up to one of my mistakes. I also had notes on conversations I’d had with people at the firm. Private, personal, deep conversations. I took notes on them because that’s how I remember and reflect on important bits of information It’s a habit I developed in school, then got compounded upon during the first 5.5 years of my career. “Take good notes” was a common refrain in my Analyst training. “You can always throw out the notes later, but you can’t remember a piece of information that you’ve forgotten.” I was having these private, personal, deep conversations with colleagues across the firm, and with anybody I would meet, at an increasing rate. Without taking notes on them, it was hard to remember the details of each person’s situation. It was hard to keep straight what I talked about with each person. “The strongest memory is weaker than the weakest ink.” So, I took notes on some of these private, personal, deep conversations. I didn’t see any issue with it — at the time — because I viewed my Notes in my phone as a very private, very secure repository. It was a closely held principle that nobody had eyes on these except for me. If I was going to share what I learned from a conversation with another person, then I’d either 1) ask their permission first or 2) obscure their identity in accordance with Chatham House Rule (depending upon the sensitivity of the information in question). That’s how I operated with everybody. That’s how I approached every conversation, as well as all of the follow-up notetaking. Relatedly, in accordance with #2, I would never disclose confidential information. I aspire to never gossip. By & large, the subject of conversation is secured between myself and the other person. So, the only times when I would ever share the content of conversation is when I thought a principle, idea, or quote from “a friend” or “a mentor” of mine might be of use to someone else’s situation. If I wouldn’t be able to share the content without risking exposure of the speaker’s identity, then I wouldn’t. If I requested permission from the speaker to share their story and they say, “I’d rather you not”, then I don’t. Because, ultimately, trust is the currency of these private, personal, deep conversations. I see it as a huge blessing that people trusted me enough to share openly. Trust is the foundation of any relationship. So, I didn’t want to do anything that would risk breaking it. I’m well aware that this comment begs the question, “So why would you ever take notes on your conversations?” The simple answer is that I never thought that anybody else would ever have a right to look there. They lived in my Notes tab on my device. It’s a locked down vault, assuming Apple’s privacy advertising actually lives up to the hype. But then, my own naïveté got exposed when I began facing threats that I was going to be court-ordered to provide access to my personal phone. I felt like I was put in an impossible dilemma: to hand over my personal phone and show that I had nothing to hide, while exposing all of these notes and digital conversations OR protect the privacy of my friends. The dilemma felt impossible at first. But the moment I reflected on what I’m solving for, the answer became obvious. I knew that no amount of money could buy back the trust of my closest relationships. Relationships aren’t for sale. Trust is the currency of deep conversations, but it can’t be exchanged-for at the bank. It has to be earned. And I knew that if I’d sacrificed the privacy with which I’d operated, even for a single instant, then all of that trust that I’d been building with other people would evaporate. This idea is a big driver of why I came forward in the first place. I could feel other people instilling more & more trust in me. I felt like the firm was trusting me with more & more responsibility. And yet, I was keeping a major secret. At first, I was keeping the secret from myself. “This is fine. Don’t worry about it. What you’re doing is completely justified. You’re creating a disproportionate amount of value compared to this measly expense, so don’t even worry about it.” These are the lines that helped me keep the secret buried in my own subconscious. But then, once it did surface (and it always does), I was consciously keeping a secret from a firm that was placing more & more trust in me. I was becoming a core part of the team. And yet, I felt like I was being a terrible team player. I felt immense guilt for taking from the team. So, I just wanted to right the relationship. I tried to do it in the quietest way possible. I didn’t want to create any extra work for anybody. I didn’t want to burden the firm with dealing with a big blow up. So I went to the one person who I figured would have to find out eventually in order to balance the firm’s books once I paid the money back. My dream scenario was to tell them, pay the money back, then move forward with a clean conscience and in right relationship. Once again, I was exposed for my naïveté. I opened up to a representative of the firm. A steward of capital. A corporate officer, not a pastor. It doesn’t make him or anybody else at the firm a bad person. I put this individual and the firm in an impossible dilemma. To follow the Standard Operating Procedures OR forgive and move forward. The former would mean that many more people would have to find out. Lawyers would likely get involved. I’d likely be fired. I’d potentially go to prison. But the firm would be protected. The latter would mean that this individual could be fired for NOT following procedure and exposing the firm to potential backlash from its own investors if word ever got out. But, I could pay back the money and would be able to remain a part of the company. The building would be filled with Grace, as I was shown forgiveness. I would be all-the-more-motivated to bust my a** for this team that I viewed as a second family. Because they saw me as one of them, as a fallible, yet forgivable human, not just an employee. But, once again, I was exposed for my idealism & naïveté. I’m well aware of why firms create SOPs. Obviously, I wanted my case to be a special one. I wanted to believe that I was worth more to the company than whatever risk they thought they were facing. I wanted the individual that I came forward to to trust me that I wouldn’t spread this information anywhere, that all I wanted to do was pay my restitution, settle the score, and move forward. I wanted this individual and all of the follow-up people that they told to trust me enough to get together to find a solution. I wanted them to believe that I came forward and admitted my mistake because I wanted to repair my fractured relationship with the team, not because I was covering something else over. It wasn’t about the money for me. It was about being in right relationship and not lying to people who I deeply cared about, people who were placing increasing levels of trust in me. I’m well aware that my coming forward was a selfish decision. My personal decision to admit to a mistake and clear my conscience put the individual I told and the entire firm in an impossible dilemma. I could tell that the individual wanted so bad to extend forgiveness and move forward. But I can also come up with a number of reasons why they chose to follow the Standard Operating Procedures. Maybe it was to minimize the future risk to the firm in an effort to maximize the future returns for our investors? (I say “our” because I was still a part of the team at the time, so this goal was shared by me as well). Maybe it was to minimize their personal exposure, giving them the out of saying, “Well I was just following procedure!” because this individual was afraid to be fired for making anything resembling a mistake, despite their long & storied tenure? Maybe they wanted to make an example out of me so that this wouldn’t happen across the rest of the team? Maybe they thought it important that I face the full extent of consequences so that I’d learn my lesson and never do it again? Maybe they chose to follow the SOPs because they didn’t want to confront the fact that they had a decision to make in the first place? Or maybe they just didn’t like me? Whatever their reason, I’m sure they had one, as did every other person I interacted with in the fallout from this situation. Ultimately, we all get to choose what we’re solving for. And this choice, whether we make it consciously or passively, is what guides our decisions every day, be it the inconsequential ones or the ones that prove to be life-changing.

Part 2