I got a message this morning from a woman named Laura, who lives in California.

She supports my work and has taken out a voluntary paid subscription (the blog is free to anyone who doesn’t wish to pay or can’t). The subscription program has been efficient and successful and has helped to make the blog a success.

Problems are very rare. But occasionally, there are software glitches, and Laura was double-billed.

That is the world we live in.

Laura was happy to pay once annually, she said, but not twice. I think she might have been expecting a run-around or a struggle. That is usually what happens when we try to talk to software or giant corporations, it is easy for humans to hide now.

And the individual feels every more alone and at the mercy of others.

I got Laura’s  number and called her right back and asked where to send a refund, and  she asked that I donate the over-payment to the Mansion work I am doing. I was touched by that. I forwarded her message to the computer techs who over see the subscription plan and it was resolved.

My police is to always refund anyone’s mistake, no questions asked. And I have never had a problem.

Laura and I had a good talk on the phone, we connected easily, she apologized for bothering me, and I told her it was no bother, it was my problem,  I had learned to take responsibility for the things I set in motion, and her call reminded me of just how much I have changed. And for the better.

She was relieved and appreciative. That felt good.

Even a couple of years ago, that would have been a very different exchange. I would have been irritated to be disturbed while I was working, I would have thought this was beneath me. I would have been curt or perhaps indifferent to Laura and her problem, which was very real.  And I’ll be honest, Laura would never have gotten through to me.

I was screened off from the word, an important author, I would have tried to give the problem to someone else.

I hope that I never stop growing and changing, and I am in awe of just how much changing I have to do.

We are easily made to feel helpless in the corporate world, especially where our money is involved and we have no humans to help us.

We don’t expect to be heard, we often feel trapped in a system where nobody is listening. If it frightening and frustrating to be in that position.

But it is an act of trust for people to pay money to support my work, and I am responsible for the subscription program. I can’t foist it off on anybody else, or hide from it. That is a change.

Sometimes, you just have to be knocked down in order to get up.

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For much of my writing life I was a New York Times bestseller, and that used to be a big deal.

When I traveled, I rode around in limousines, with eager escorts who supplied me with aspirin, band-aids, snacks and anything else I needed.  I was never asked to drive myself anywhere, and other people kept my schedule and told me each morning what I was supposed to do. People asked for my autograph all the time and said they were honored to meet me.

My agent was a ferocious warrior who descended on anyone who messed with me. My wife at the time handled all of the money, I never saw a monthly bank statement. She made my doctors appointments and reminded me of them.

Whenever there was a problem, there was someone somewhere – an agent, assistant, publishing aide – to take care of it for me. I was a big shot, I could not be bothered by small details, I had great work to do.

And oh yes, I ate in the very best restaurants int he country and send the bill to my publisher. And I traveled first class when I flew and stayed only in four-star hotels..

Large crowds came to bookstores to see me, my editors regularly flew me to New York and dined me in restaurants in Manhattan and met with me in big conference rooms with startlingly beautiful people, and asked me how I was, and how I felt, and was I happy?  They were eager for my ideas.

Reporters and TV crews called on me all the time, I had a publicist who was always available to me, and I gave scores of interviews all  year.

It would have been inconceivable for Laura to contact me directly about some issue that might have seemed small to me, or the province of the many people  – assistants, interns, publicity aides – who tended to me.

All of that changed in 2008. I rarely, if every, speak to an editor, there are few interviews and no invitations to New York, no expensive accounts, no eager assistants and secretaries to call when I was busy working. An interview once or twice a year.

I am an older mid-list author in a different time, and I have always known what that means. My agent and I talk once a year, we don’t have all that much to talk about. Yet I am happier than I have ever been, and feel more successful than I have ever felt. Life is quite curious sometimes.

I  am not bitter or regretful about all this. Humility is a gift, I have come to learn. I am learning how to live my life, and how to be responsible for what I do. I have no people to hide behind or drive my places or do my work for me. Good riddance to them, I had become a kind of impervious monster.

The change was good for me in many ways, and it gave rise to the blog, which I love, and my photography and my life with Maria, which I love even more. I went through a lot in the change, a breakdown, loneliness, depression,  terror,  some humiliation, even bankruptcy, and the gift of that was that I learned empathy, for me the highest aspiration of a human being.

it is never good to be cut off from ordinary people or the original and true world, and I enjoy being an ordinary person again.

I did not dismiss Laura’s call for help this morning, I understood immediately that a malfunction with somebody else’s credit card is a serious and frightening thing. Phone trees are viscerally inhuman and disturbing.

I didn’t want to pass it along to someone else, I asked for the donations, Laura was kind enough to send me money for my work year after year. It was my responsibility.

I made sure the techs had Laura’s information, I will follow-up on it every day, it is simple to fix. I immediately offered her a refund, which she declined and sent instead to the Mansion fund. That is pretty classy, she deserves attention and relief. I will make sure she gets it.

I joke all the time to friends and people I know in stores that I’m going to call Customer Service if they don’t take care of me and we all laugh at the joke – we know Customer Service is not likely to take care of us, the modern corporation  always pretends that we are important to them, but we all know we are not.

Talking to Laura – I thanked her for contacting me – I realized that in a remarkable twist of fate, I am Customer Service now. The old impulse to forward her message on to somebody else is gone. It’s on me.  And I do care. The people who support my work have made it possible for me to be a writer in the new world, and I am ever grateful to them.

And I understand well what it is to try to get problems like sorted out in the Corporate Nation. They don’t care about me either. And I don’t ever want to do that to someone else.