ENOUGH IS ENOUGH - WHEN WILL MORE PEOPLE START SPEAKING UP?

I’m feeling the world pretty heavily right now … all of it … I feel like I was riding along ‘pretty ok’ … not great, but not fully broken … there was some hope when Washington state announced they’d reopen in phases due to COVID-19 (which is annoying, but hopeful … ) … I saw a place where my kids could maybe play at a park this summer … I saw glimpses, though few, of sitting in a bar with a friend or going out to eat dinner with my husband. I had slight hope that maybe my son would play baseball this summer …

I HAD HOPE … AND HOPE CAN BE POWERFUL

The thing with hope is: regardless what you’re hopeful for, it guides us to do things … it guides our actions and reactions to life … regardless of what motivates YOUR HOPE … for some right now it might be a haircut, for others it might be affording groceries again or getting their job back … but the feeling of that resonates with us all and it brings POWER … it’s collective … I hear this all too often when people are down: well, it could be worse!! You could be blah blah blah … YES, we all could be in worse conditions … but the POWER OF HOPE is what I’m speaking of here.

I had it … I was gripping to it tightly …

And then George Floyd and the riots started and CHAZ was created in the city of Seattle where I live. Businesses started being burned, looted … historical landmarks were and are being destroyed … and I now I wake up with ‘that dreadful feeling’ … and the feeling of hope … it feels like it was ripped from me. I feel a void.

HOW MUCH CAN WE TAKE?

WHEN IS ENOUGH ENOUGH?

Yesterday I was asked by a client to put up a message on the website I designed for them that read: closed until July 31st … CLOSED … not because they want to be closed, not because they are sick, not because they aren’t interested in working anymore … not because they are going on vacation or because they want to focus on family … but because the current world and how it’s being run and managed has made it impossible for them to continue keeping their small business open.

ARE PEOPLE AWARE THAT THIS IS WRONG?

Are you aware that the fact that ‘they’ are ok with MASS protesting and riots and not stopping that, but they are stopping small businesses from running IS WRONG? … that ‘they’ won't stop people from BURNING DOWN small businesses but they will keep you from running your small business in a way that makes it successful? … that all that sh*t is WRONG!!??? Where are the voices? Are we afraid to say it? Is the fear of people telling us that we are:

murderers
racists
supporting the wrong political party
virus spreaders

^^ is being told we are those things (which would be entirely FALSE btw) keeping us quiet and making us submit to the awful and horrible ‘rules’ we are being placed under?

SADLY, YES.

You wouldn’t believe the ‘behind the scenes’ conversations I have with my clients daily who wish they could speak out but are afraid of what will happen … what people will say … how harshly they could be judged for their thoughts ... I’d love to speak out much LOUDER and more OBVIOUS than this little blog post that you are maybe even rolling your eyes at …

I’D LOVE TO BE ABLE TO SAY:

THIS IS COMPLETE BULLSH*T!!!!!

But will you then think of me as a murderer? That if I tell you I’m going to go out in the world without a mask … am I then a virus spreader? If I speak out about the hypocrisy of mass protests going on at the same time my clients have to CLOSE THEIR BUSINESS DOWN, am I then a racist??? The answer, OF COURSE, is NOOOOO!! I’m not.

WHAT KIND OF BACKWARDS WORLD IS THIS?

Are we going to just sit inside forever?
Why are mass protests ok but mass celebrations aren’t?
Are we going to be ok with COVID-19 only cropping up when riots die down?
What happens when we run out of money?
What happens when we can’t afford our bills?
Are we going to keep our kids out of sports and activities because we are afraid of a virus?
Are we going to be ok with sending our kids to school wearing masks for 8 hours straight?
I could go on and on and on and on and on …

Why aren’t more people asking WHY is this happening? And omg, how about tossing in: IS THIS OK???

WHERE ARE THE QUESTIONS?

Lately I’m seeing a ton of judging on social media, but rarely do I see actual QUESTIONS!! I see a lot of ‘click bait’ article sharing on FB without any REAL investigating going on …

One example of how dangerous it is to share articles without investigating … I saw an article posted yesterday and the headline read: FLORIDA CLOSES DOWN BUSINESSES AGAIN DUE TO HIGH INCREASE OF COVID-19 … if you read that, you’d think: oh wow, must be really bad over there!! … well, if you READ that particular article, you’d find that it was a total of 6 businesses they reported that closed for reasons that had more to do with running a business under the current ‘regulations’ than the virus itself. That it was too costly for them to stay open and they’d rather close until they could open at full capacity.

INVESTIGATE BEFORE YOU SHARE!!!

If you were to truly sit and ask yourself questions … and look at the data … and look at the timeline of the last 4 months … and look at what is truly happening … would the results be loudly crazy? Is that too scary to think about?

This is not ok. Nobody should be bullied and placed into a state of fear because speaking out against / questioning what is CLEARLY WRONG would determine they are the horrid words I listed above … I shouldn’t be afraid to speak up because if I do, maybe people will never support my small business again or spread lies about me being something that I’m not.

I’M FOR SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS … I’M FOR OUR RIGHTS AS PEOPLE

And currently, we are being played … and I wish so badly that people would feel comfortable standing up for what is right without feeling that if you do, you are saying the other side is wrong.

It’s ok to see and say that if protests and mass gatherings to speak up for the rights of a group of people is allowed, then we can certainly maintain safety at weddings and events where people are CELEBRATING … that we can certainly and safely open up small businesses. So let’s get that voice going and speak up before it’s too late.

XO~ Heather