2018 Spring April 12 Thursday

2018 Spring April 12 Thursday

69 degrees this morning, walk 34:38 minutes

A “cool” 69 degrees this morning, as fortunately I dressed for 55 degrees or so!  The wind was blowing at around 20 mph, so I was debating even if I was walking.  Overall it was ok, even if the wind made it somewhat unpleasant at times.

Pace was 8 seconds slower then my goal pace.

Thursday is here already!  As usual, time seems to fly.  

I am surprised at the number of small businesses I have met who are considering or trying to get out of business, sell their business or whatever.  This is the very small business of one to five employees.  Some are affected by the internet sales, some are strictly services.  Most are busy and relatively profitable.

While I see a limited number of such businesses, I think such businesses form a basic structure of our culture, especially in providing services on a neighborhood or specialized areas.  

On the other hand, I see a lot of people starting new businesses .  Other than service businesses, restaurants etc., a lot of the new businesses are a combination of retail and internet sales, with many being internet sales only.

I don’t know what this means, and I really don’t know if it is good or bad, but just some trends I have personally observed.  

In a way, it warms my heart to observe someone walk into a business, and both the owner and customer greets each other as friends, not as the customer expecting to be taken advantage of and the business owner seeing it as benefiting the customer by offering a beneficial service or product, not seeing the customer strictly as a $ sign to make money off of.

One fo the business trends I really object to are the businesses that see customers basically as objects to attempt to “sell” more items too, not as providing a service to customers.

An example of this (one company among many unfortunately) is Capital One, which (according to an article I read years ago) sees customers as a gold mine of opportunity to see more services instead of focusing on providing a service to the customers.  They emphasize “cross selling” etc. and see a customer as a golden goose to fleece.  

I made a decision then to avoid Capital One or any company that uses such tactics, as much as possible.  Where I can’t avoid it, I “just say no”.  

Wanted to mention another dream.  I didn’t write it down, but it was so strong I remembered it.

I was apparently working, and I parked my car and went into a business.  When I came out, my car was gone.  Of course, at first I thought I had merely forgotten where I parked it, but I quickly realized it was stolen.  I don’t recall the rest of that dream.  

Another portion, in a different location, I felt real fear when confronting a man who was much bigger than  I was when we got into a confrontation.  I don’t remember anything more about that dream.

At the ballgame last night, I was not temped at all by meat.  I happily ate non-meat junk food.  Of course, they didn’t have any corn dogs!

I really don’t know how much longer I will avoid eating meat, but at least for today, I will continue to avoid meat.

That’s it for now, Thursday, April 12, 2018.