The Gift of Getting Hacked

When losing something turns out to be the cleanest kind of freedom

Snapshots from Jakarta

You know that moment when something “bad” happens and your first reaction is, of course it did? Or, “damn!!!” followed by expletives.

That was me this week when my Substack account got hacked.

One day I was posting about meaning and death and love, and the next day I was apparently spamming people with crypto links. Substack’s brilliant response? They shut down my account completely — a bit like amputating a leg because of a paper cut.

At first I did the usual mental flailing: Oh no, all my posts! (Which, by the way, probably no one was re-reading anyway.) But then I laughed. Because I realized I didn’t actually lose anything essential.

I’d been writing on Substack mostly for myself — a handful of loyal readers, many of whom are related to me or too polite to unsubscribe. And I noticed that while I called it “writing,” it had quietly turned into “maintaining.” I was feeding a little digital garden that nobody visited.

So when it all disappeared, there was a strange relief.

Just… space. No metrics to check. No polite reminder that only thirteen people opened my last post.

I got my account back today. And the first thing I thought was, What should I write about?

And then I laughed again — because this is what I wanted to write about.

The gift of getting hacked.

It reminded me that writing isn’t about protecting output; it’s about noticing life.

And lately, life has been waiting outside my apartment in Jakarta — loud, humid, and unapologetically alive.

So I spent the day walking the city, getting lost, sweating through my shirt, and realizing that the path to familiarity is just patient curiosity.

Maybe the hack was a gentle nudge:

Less time talking about life.

More time living it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​