Money Talks

What is yours saying?

The following wrote itself while I slept.

No one is exempt from the times in which we are living, but we all have a choice in how to show up. The ways will be different based on our individual needs and abilities, but we can all do something.

If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward. (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.)

How are you moving forward?

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I have always been a good boycotter.

When I was a Freshman at NYU, we often got our late-night munchies at one of the many bodega-like delis in the area called, Haney Farms.

Following an unfortunate incident involving a bag of Chips Ahoy cookies and, what we assumed were, mealybugs, I never went back. It was the most convenient of the options, but I could not get my body to go back into that place.

Fun Fact: Haney Farms ended up shuttering its doors an undetermined amount of time later. (It could have been months or a couple of years – my memory does not hold the specifics.)

There have been a few restaurants over the years that have crossed the line (and even a person or two).

We can say all day that we must be the change we want to see (nod to Ghandi), but unless we’re willing to sacrifice a little, be uncomfortable, find new pathways, they are just words.

To construct new systems, we must say goodbye to the old ones. Under the best circumstances, change can feel sucky and hard, even when we can imagine a better alternative on the other side.

Leaving Facebook was fucking hard! I had aggregated a couple thousand friends (first called fans, which was a bit of ego-fun), from people I barely remembered from childhood to people I made even one moment of contact with, to those dear ones who will be with me regardless of my social media presence.

I felt alive in the fantasy. It felt adjacent to my young dreams of stardom. I would post a photo and some flowery words and people clicked likes and hearts, leaving me feedback that I thought was nourishment, but was really, empty calories.

After a while, posts of substance were no longer in the algorithm – they were replaced with advertisements and memes designed to dumb us down.

The vitriol that followed the path of our politics, felt not only unproductive but downright dangerous. Free speech behind the keyboard did not resemble what people said face-to-face, until the onslaught numbed us to the point of confrontation.

It was slow and methodical, but it worked.

The next hard one was Amazon (Prime). I had lived in NYC for 17 years, accustomed to delivery of everything to my door (including laundry). I absolutely took advantage of the ease Amazon provided over the years.

I appreciate that there are mom & pop shops whose businesses rely on Amazon, as well as logistics workers who keep the machine well-oiled. They deserve to thrive. This is the chink in the armor for me, but when I think of Bezos, I feel sick.

I know there’s no way to live completely free of this sort of hold (unless it’s off the grid), or we all decide to say no and be the change. This may reveal my privilege, but it also reveals a responsibility to leverage that privilege for those who can’t.

In the same spirit, it hurt my heart to leave Whole Foods, but it really hasn’t been the Whole Foods I loved since Bezos bought it. Once I was able to free myself from the idea of Whole Foods, I found alternatives and can see more clearly the power of marketing.

The upside to these choices has been a return to local mom & pop shops, contributing to the local economy in a more direct way, while connecting to people and their stories.

When I learned that ChatGPT donated 25 million dollars to Trump’s agenda, that was a deal breaker. (I wish we could boycott Citizen’s United so this sort of obscenity would end.)

If you’ve ever used AI, you know it can become like a relationship. It knows things about you because you’ve told it, shared with it, and asked it for counsel.

I’m careful with my use, but I have used it enough that it felt a little like a breakup (including the fatigue that comes with knowing I’ll have to start all over again with Claude.AI).

I’ve traded Home Depot for our local hardware store, family-run for generations - Target for the drug store, supermarket, and individual brands and stores.

Never been to a Hobby Lobby or Chick-fil-A and will never step a foot inside one.

I have many more of these stories, but you get the point.

Next on the list are:

• Instagram (which I’m planning to leave in a few days)

• Spotify (if you have alternatives that you love, please let me know)

I will remain on YouTube and Substack (with a wink to LinkedIn).

At the same time as I’m limiting my visibility on social media, I am also growing my business, which feels counter-intuitive sometimes. How will I reach potential clients and students if I’m not out there?

This year, my word is TRUST.

I trust that my efforts will attract those who need or want to find what I’m offering. (So far so good.)

I left Facebook with approximately 2,000 friends, for Instagram with 534 followers (I kept it private), and am here on Substack with a mere fraction at 190 subscribers.

These numbers tell a chapter of my story.

They speak to letting go.

Letting go of:

• competing for numbers that don’t reflect my mission

• attaching my value to how many people I can digitally gather

• thinking my work depends on platforms that don’t support my content

• spending time mindlessly scrolling when I could be tending to the garden of my imagination

The soil matters as much as the seed, water, and sunshine. Every choice I make is compost to enrich the nutrients of my foundation while honoring impermanence on every level.

I’m Gen X.

I remember what life felt like before it became virtual, before our cervical spines reversed their curves from the constant forward flexion of looking down at phones.

It was gritty and when we didn’t know how to do something, we figured out a way to do it. We didn’t have Google or Open AI; we developed problem-solving skills and were often uncomfortable.

It is the skills developed in childhood, and my current mindfulness practices, that are serving me now.

None of us can pass a purity test and that’s not the point. I’m not looking to transcend the worldly systems but can’t be complicit in turning a blind eye.

There is so much willful ignorance to the horrors we can see with our own eyes (if our algorithm supports it – UGH!). Alternate facts and realities are fantasies, while real people are being harmed.

It’s not perfect or all-encompassing, but if my dollars can speak, that is what I’ll use to protest.

If it’s time for the old systems, built on greed and abuse, to crumble, so be it. I dream of systems built on foundations of virtue and equanimity, where we honor our shared humanity and incredible creative spirit!

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Hit me up if you’re looking to create or revisit a meditation practice. A more mindful planet is a more compassionate one.