I’ve mentioned before that I often write posts that are just as much a reminder to myself as they are an attempt to be advice towards anyone else. That is definitely the case with today’s post, as I was already mentally writing it before an even more valid reason to talk about it came up. 

This weekend, I was supposed to head to a churning meetup in Chicago. However, a system of strong storms cancelled both my original flight and any chance I had of getting on to another flight for several days afterwards. 

It sucked to miss it in the first place – as anyone who has been to one of his shindigs can attest, if being a MS savant, travel entrepreneur or software engineer doesn’t work out, friend of the blog wavydavy will make a great event planner. It sucked even more watching all the fun that they had – I’ve always believed in-person connections are so important to building trust as you dive deeper into MS. 

But the more I fought and HUCAd the supposedly exclusive Executive Platinum service line, the more it was framed how unfortunate this entire situation was. 

There were 2 days of cancelled flights on a popular route that were already oversold, and I was far from the only person that AA didn’t have the ability to accommodate. I started thinking about the other things that people were traveling for – the sold out Rüfüs Du Sol concert at Wrigley, Dodgers fans going for a masterful performance by Yamamoto. 

And that’s to say nothing for the other big life events. Birthdays, funerals, reunions, once in a lifetime vacations, etc. etc. etc. I was getting bent out of shape about a meetup when virtually all of us will be in the same room again in just a few weeks. 

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be bummed out when plans go awry, but you should be happy to be practicing a hobby that makes an unexpected cancellation not a huge deal. If something unavoidable cancels your plans, you can always (usually) get all of your points back, regroup, and do it again later. That’s not something that most people can do.

On the flip side, most MSers will also deal with unfortunate news that is more permanent and unavoidable (especially in the last couple of years). One of the more reliable workhorses for #teamcashback appears to have bit the dust in the last couple of days as well. 

It was already a phoenix play that rose from the ashes and was living on extremely borrowed time, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. 

Fighting the blackbox algorithm and getting your account working on a regular cadence was extremely valuable, and I think a lot of us held out hope that this dinosaur was too archaic to figure out how to stem the bleeding. It’s way too early to know for sure, but it seems like they might have finally done it. 

While it wasn’t quite as consequential as some other high profile odes that have been written in 2026, this was similar to losing a lucrative job to many enterprising churners who had their operations in order. 

Will it be back? I wouldn’t be wildly surprised, and look forward to hearing from the subject matter expert (save us, Chad).

Ultimately, the only reason this loss is such a bummer is because of how lucrative it was. I’ve relied too much on cliche adages lately to hit y’all with a “it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved at all”. But while the exact percentage is widely debated, it’s generally accepted that at least half of the country is living paycheck to paycheck. 

This one was essentially pressing the free money button, and now that the initial sadness has worn off, it’s hard to feel anything beyond gratitude for being able to pad the cash reserves even if it’s no longer possible. 

I’ll be very sad if this is the end and there’s no amount of switching WiFi networks to bring it back to life. But if it is, I’m just glad I was at the right place and right time. This single play moved up a lot of timelines on things I wanted to accomplish.

In one final parting note – I can’t help but notice that a top 3 all-time PayPal product died during the MEAB meetup last year, and this one died during my probe’s meetup. Perhaps those of us attending this year’s edition of MEAB should burn some sage before the event to get rid of this meetup related bad juju?

Hope you all have a great week and a reason to practice some gratitude.

Anogyeɛ!

Pictured: the meetup reaper targeting a new victim