Taking walks and showing discipline

I got a smiley face on my Starbucks cup today.

A nice little gesture, but I would rather have not been charged 60 cents for soy milk.

For whatever reason they usually don't charge for soy in an iced coffee. I imagine it's because iced coffee is supposed to be cheap, and adding 60 cents is significant to the price point and would chase non-dairy drinkers to Dunkin Donuts.

I don't know, I just know it shows "soy +$0.60", and then they manually subtract the $0.60 and I pay $3.15.

But every once in a while (I guess when it's a new team member, or one who doesn't use the register much), they don't subtract the soy. It's a tough spot, because it's like right at the cutoff of where it would seem worth quibbling over it. For 25 cents I let it go and there's not even a blog entry, for $1 I quibble. For 60 cents I'm kind of caught in the middle.

"oh, deduct the soy, not supposed to charge me for that" seems like a ridiculous story. And even though it turns out I'm somehow correct, I know that for at least this brief moment I'll be a problem customer trying to pull one over on them. So I just let it slide.

I'm visiting my mommy's house right now, and I enjoy the New England foliage.

It can be wild out there though; there are these kids who YELL from the car when they pass me walking on the sidewalk. They'll do it acutely (maybe honk simultaneous to it), like trying to scare me or just suddenly interrupt my zen mind-wandering walking zone, or I don't know. I don't really get it.

I guess it offers some sort of release after being locked in a classroom all day.

I used to be spunky about it, when I was younger myself. I'd flip them off or yell or gesture in some way. You're not gonna do that to me and ride off into the sunset. It seemed like a noble defense of my interests to bounce the attitude right back.

But with age and wisdom you learn that it doesn't work like that; that it's exactly what they're hoping for when they yell and you're actually emboldening their behavior.

Sometimes life gives you these situations where there's really no good option, there's no way to make it right. And it takes a really deep commitment to the inner voice inside your soul to at least do the thing that causes no further damage.

I've become really seasoned at all aspects of showing no reaction to them.

When they time it just right it can kind of make you jolt, and I've learned to catch myself. The other day they got me good and I felt like it was too late to hide my flinch, so I went with it and exaggerated it into a confused "did I hear something?" sort of look, to at least minimize what they got out of me. I felt really refined and like I just cant be trolled by them.

And I feel like using Facebook lately takes the same sort of discipline.

People are riled up about the election and the misogyny and the looming Third World War with Russia and all this stuff. And there's nothing you can say to anyone that would do anything besides make them more mad and more committed to whatever they were talking about in the first place.

I often click 'unfollow' and it's really great.

But now I'm ENRAGED and I want to express this:

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It doesn't matter who the President is.

They are amazing at how they evolve to maintain mind-control. It was growing increasingly obvious that Bush/Kerry/Obama/Romney/Clinton are all the same style of politician. But with Trump they've dignified the idea that the voters control some kind of meaningful difference AND simultaneously used him to divide and pit people into believing the other half of the country is crazed and out to get them.

And not to mention, anything that breaks now they can blame on this anomaly coming in rather than it just being the inevitable result of expanding the money supply and initiating war for the past decades.

source: giphy

Trump is not an outsider who slipped through the cracks of corporate control. They didn't just take the year off. He's the evolution of corporate control and was the best solution for them at this point in time (precisely because he plays the role of being an outsider). People who believe Trump is some kind of maverick who defied the system are probably wrong, and people who are afraid should probably be less afraid. It's business as usual, with Donald Trump cast as US President.

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And none of this is to say we don't have the power to enact change on our world. It's just that who the President is is a symptom and not a cause of anything, and so focusing on that is a misdirection from what's actually important.

IMO, just enjoy the show