Walla Walla, WA

Mill Creek Trail

Run Time: 64:54

A drizzly, windy day in Eastern Washington, but warm enough to run in shorts and a long sleeve t. A great week in the Western mountains, with a fair amount of sunshine and even some early spring greenery.

Found a trail along old Mill Creek, actually just flat tops of dikes constructed on both sides of the creek. A couple of miles long on each side, so some back-tracking and lapping required to get the full run in, but plenty of squalor variety. This squalor was at least interesting, with classic cars and old cement mixers and barrels of waste.

On Apple Maps, the photos showed weird lines in the creek that I thought might be some glitch of satellite imagery, like repeated water sections taking the place of actual location-specific imaging. But it was real, some kind of artificial water break every fifty feet or so, all the way through town. No idea what purpose they served. The creek itself seemed man-made, or at least curated from its original path and shape, no doubt to suit the Mill.

Visiting distributors and prospects this week, talking about the chaos of tariffs, wondering about job security. More artificial constructs, like those creek breaks and dikes, taking us all away from our original path, tricking and trapping us with the illusion of importance.

It would be important if I lost my job. It would be important if tariffs caused some business to fail. It would be important if I jumped up into BC for a couple of prospecting visits and then border patrol wanted to take a look at my devices upon return. It would be important if our retirement savings expire before we do.

But we have built our own traps of importance, and tariffs are actually a very appropriate symbol of the mechanism of entrapment. Tariffs are taxes on the import of goods (an ironic term). Stuff. The commodity of consumerism.

Initially, I suppose, paid labor was a relatively innocent social and economic development, much better than forced or coerced labor. It sure feels coerced now. Yes, I get it, there are a billion paths to economic freedom, and you can always live in a hut with a firepit and a straw bed, but we can say we were born into this, right? Reversing or radically altering the current system is a multi-generational project at this point, and keeping the planet livable probably has to take priority.

At least we should be able to all agree that it is a farce, a tragically unfunny shitshow designed and crafted by the worst of the rich, white men, not unlike politics, and we’re all just forced to deal with it and navigate through it and hey, let’s just work through any problems that come up without getting all emotional about it and treat each other with a little grace, and tell me again about what your grandkid said the other day.

I have a feeling that, if my job ever were in serious jeopardy, that I would be given no heads-up whatsoever. Up to the moment that the axe fell, it would all be “sales is the most important thing we are spending money on right now.” It would suddenly become the most important thing to stop spending money on right now. There is a reason for this deception: they need me to produce, and if I feel secure, I should produce more. It all makes business sense. Business sense.

Isn’t it romantic, this cut-throat world of competition and pretend testosterone warfare? We’re all Knights, riding to uphold the honor of King and Kingdom. Before the first proto-worker accepted payment for labor, there certainly was competition – to survive, to live as long and as well as possible. Somehow I don’t think we traded that for economic competition, but we sure muddied the waters.

Seven or so years of this, possibly, then who knows what? Somehow, though, we’ve designed a system where our retirement incomes are tied to the stock market, so there are multiple levels of fuckery at play. I am waiting for the app that shows me who all has been enriched by my efforts, and to what extent.