Hasn’t the whole effort towards mindfulness and Cultivating Calm been about learning to deal with the trauma we encounter every day? We’re assaulted by non-stop bad news, people grabbing power, tearing down schools, raiding schools, and it seems never-ending. ElizabethwithaZ responded to my previous blog post, Clean Hands, Dirty Conflict, with this statement:

People don’t know what to do. Without organizing, people feel powerless to resist. It feels like half the people in ed are being forced to work with perpetual trauma-brain right now.

Source: ElizabethwithaZ via BlueSky

Without organizing. Dr. Brett Olmsted wrote me a week ago and said to my skepticism:

We can organize & gear up for the midterms. We can push against every EO & policy…We can vote with our pocketbooks and try to avoid the techbros who kissed the ring. Targeted boycotts have worked in the past (grape boycott’s of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta) though this feels larger. Ultimately, we need the public outcry to be so huge we vote in a real political agent of change (Progressive Era and New Deal America)

I’m still a bit skeptical. That’s probably because, as ElizabethwithaZ says, I haven’t the faintest clue about organizing. I’m not sure I want to march in the streets, risk getting beat up or my eyes gouged out. What books do you check out of the local library that have info on that? I bet I can find some here.

To that end, I made a list of everyone I do business with online (where most of my business goes these days) in my Boycotting DEI Reducers. Today, I can say I’ve taken action to drop all those I do business with that reduced (eliminated) DEI programs…and resolved not to ever do business with them again.

But there are some that it’s super hard to avoid:

• Spectrum – my cable and internet provider
• Amazon – I cancelled all my subscriptions, but my Prime account had just renewed in December, so I have access to it until 12/22/2025. After that it’s history. Costco will probably take its place…it doubled-down on its DEI policy. Way to go!

In terms of my technology, well, I’ve made changes there, too.

What I find difficult to change is the world. To that end, I have a few quotes that help with perpetual brain-trauma. May I share them with you?

• “Make the best of what is in your power and take the rest as it comes.”
• “Cease worrying about things that are beyond the power of your will.”
• “We suffer more in imagination than in reality.”

And, when all else fails, Memento Mori. . .let it remind you to focus on what matters.