Random Questions in my Head That Are Making Me Not Sleep

Can you still consider yourself a generous person if you are very giving with people and "treat" all the time because you know you make more money than others, but yet you get pissed off when people are not appreciative? In particular, when you take your kid's friends out to expensive events, treat them to dinners, buy them the keepsakes that come along with the events...and the parents never even text you a "thanks"? Are you still generous if you are bitter about your giving?

Is it wrong to really want a promotion because it will pay you a lot more money but really not want it because you aren't sure you want more responsibility and work?

Should I feel bad that a co-worker, who sucks at actual work and has for years, is going to be laid off? What if she is lazy af and is kind of an asshole, but she smiles in your face and pretends that you are still good friends?

What car should I get? I'm looking at the Lexus RX350 or the Range Rover Evoque SE Premium. I really like the Range Rover the best but it is known for being unreliable, and everyone I know with a Lexus loves it. And what about the fact that what I really and truly in my heart want is the Porsche Panamera? Will I always resent the fact that I am not getting what I really want? And, if I'm taking the promotion with all the extra work and commitment, do I owe it to myself to at least check out the more expensive and more perfect car?

What do you do when your daughter has become best friends with a boy and a girl, and things then start getting teenager-y? Like, its the three of them all the time, and they get along great. And now, I think the boy and girl are starting to like each other, and then my kiddo is left out. How do I help her manage that?

What happens when you get to an age where you decide you will take no shit from anyone, and that people who are ignorant or annoying or careless will have no place in your life...and then realize you are maybe becoming intolerant of imperfection? Where do you draw the line between what is acceptable and what isn't? How do you know when you are cutting too many people out of your life, and how do you know if you are using good reasons to cut them out?

How do you remove yourself from solving everyone else's problems when you can't even solve your own? If you are overwhelmed with your own petty life decisions and issues, why do people even think you are capable of tackling their problems? And why do I think I'm capable of this?

Will I be able to get past the pit in my stomach every time I see a friend/family member/high school acquaintance post their support for Bret Kavanaugh? It's taking everything in me to not drive to Louisiana and beat the crap out of my cousins for things they have posted (but then I have never met them in person so why do I even care?). This whole Kavanaugh thing is making me insane and I feel like the world is on fire and that none of these other issues means anything because Trump and his collection of douchebros are going to kill us all anyway so why even bother getting up in the morning?
 

Politics: You Love Trump Because Of What He Says, Not Despite It

Here's the short of it - Trump has so many supporters because he is saying exactly what they think. They don't support him despite the racism and sexism and all that - they love him because of it. They say they don't, because they would be embarrassed to admit it, but they do.

Because really, if I supported a candidate and believed is his or her positions on the issues, and then s/he made fun of a disabled person or pretended not to know who David Duke is or called women s/he didn't like fat and ugly...that would end my support. Immediately. Hard stop. Trump's supporters only love him more the more extreme he gets. They love it and they support it and it's what they want.

Americans are scared because life is hard. They feel like their power is slipping away, and who better to blame than the "other"? Donald Trump makes them feel like he is their big strong daddy who will send the bad guys away with just a stern look and snide comment. And Americans want to believe this. They do believe this...as if life were that simple.

I have to admit, I do not know one person in real life who supports Donald Trump. No one I have actual live conversations with has any idea why anyone is supporting him. But numerous people I know (and a distant cousin or three) on Facebook are loud-mouthed supporters of his, and if you try to engage politically about him, they all-caps scream at you. I don't know if they learned to shout down their detractors rather than converse with them from Trump, or whether they are just birds of a feather. But they certainly have the lack of intelligent curiosity thing down pat.

What I feel about this election is simple. I'm sad that my country-people are so ignorant. And I'm scared that there are more of them than there are of us and President Trump is in our future.

The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Everything

I don't know exactly where this post is going, so Future Me, when you read this, I'm sorry ahead of time for meandering and not really having a point.

Well, actually, I think I do have a point that I can find pretty quickly. The point is that being afraid is kind of just what we do now. It is who we are. It is ingrained in us. We are afraid of terrorism every time we go through the Lincoln Tunnel. We are afraid of being shot up at the movies. We are afraid of random acts of violence at every turn, and no where feels safe anymore.

We went to see the new Star Wars movie yesterday (awesome, and I say that as a decidedly non-geeky person). The truth is though, I couldn't stop worrying. Every time I saw someone get up from their seat, I worried that they were going to get a gun or bomb or who knows what. The guy sitting next to me was alone at the theater, and right as the lights dimmed, he was up and off (I guess to use the men's room?) and I panicked a little. When he came back and vaulted over the seats to get to our row, I couldn't exhale until he was sitting down and nerding out. It didn't used to be like this. There used to be places that could be an escape from worrying and fear.

This morning, I got up to news that a woman had taken her car and repeatedly driven onto the sidewalk outside the Paris casino on the Vegas Strip. She was aiming for people, both hands on the steering wheel, trying to hit as many people as possible. And, to add just another touch of crazy, she had her 3 year old buckled into the backseat. Vegas could not be more of an escape; it could not feel more unreal and over the top escapist. And yet. there was no safety there.

Of course, there was the terrorist action in Paris about a month ago, with a stadium and concert hall as the targets. I've been to Paris twice and am planning to return next year. It is a dream destination, somewhere to get lost in the beauty and elegance of European perfection. And then there was San Bernadino a couple of weeks ago, with another horrific terror attack in a workplace against people who had just thrown the attacker a baby shower a few months earlier. No one feels like work is an escape from reality - in fact, it is reality itself. It is a place where you worry about losing your job and not being able to pay your bills. but it shouldn't be a place where you worry about losing your life. And of course there have been other incidents over the past few years: the church shootings, the school shootings, the mall shootings...the list goes on.

Where do we find logic in any of this? Where do we rest our minds, if we aren't safe anywhere? Where do we escape to, if not the movies or vacation?

As we were trying to decide about vacations for 2016, I thought of Portugal as an ideal choice because I don't think it would be a big terrorism risk. Where do I really want to go this year? Istanbul and Cappadocia. But Turkey is too risky. Morroco has always drawn me in...but no. Too dangerous. African safari? Top of the list, really. But that's being pushed off as well, because perhaps it's not the best time to head to Africa when so much of it is in turmoil. So even as we are planning to escape from it all, it's all still in the front of our minds. When we are saying, "hey, Salt Lake City and Vancouver seem like top destinations right now!" you know something is off.

Is this the reality now? Is this how we live and how we fear? Is that fear something we never escape?

I remember after 9/11, I was thinking of the middle east. I couldn't get out from under the fear of another terrorist attack after watching the smoke billow from downtown NYC from my office window. I thought of the people who live in the middle east, who live every day wondering if their cafe will be bombed, or their bus, or their nightclub. And I thought about my life, pre-9/11, and how I never thought for a second about going to concerts or sporting events or to Shop Rite for cold cuts...and how people in the world lived every day as if it were 9/12.

Then things calmed down some, and we got into the every day politicking of terrorism. And now the fear is back, not necessarily stemming from another 9/11 but from what that every day Joe you see on the bus every day could do to your store or venue or church.

All I know is that I am sick of living in fear and sick of the knowledge that things will most likely never go back to normal.