So, I have successfully resisted the lure of Prime Day through two mechanisms.

1. None of the sales are particularly great.

2. Belligerently reminding myself that waiting two days to order something from Amazon in order to support the striking workers who want Amazon to pay them a living wage will not kill me.

Trust me. I get the whole instant gratification thing.  Honestly, it’s what keeps me from buying stuff online a lot of the time.  If I can get it brick and mortar right fucking now by running over to the bookstore four blocks from my house instead of having to wait, I will.

But here’s the thing, paying your people a living wage should not be something we have to agitate for.  It should be a given.  Do we really need to have a history lesson on how the Minimum Wage was created to be the minimum someone could make and support themselves and even a family?* It was never meant to be what you pay teenagers who “don’t have any responsibilities… “Which of course ignores the fact that many teenagers have responsibilities to themselves and/or their own offspring.  Because teenagers have been making babies since time immemorial and with the way at the GOP are constantly eroding support for birth control and abortion, that shit is only going to happen more frequently.

Ahem, sorry…

So, yeah, there are no deals that are remotely tempting enough to make me want to go back on my ethics, and, well, I have ethics.

I do not hold you to my ethics, and there are plenty of reasons that someone might opt to cross the metaphorical picket line.  But if I’m to live according to my own personal ethics, I can’t.  And won’t.

And it can be super hard to be true to stuff like that in face of things like massively discounted stuff you really want and may actually need.

So, yeah, the fact that none of the deals have been particularly awesome has definitely helped my resolve.

The thing is, the way shit is going on the planet, in this country, everywhere, we have got to put more thought into how and why we consume the things we do.  You all are smart enough to go do the research on carbon emissions, pollution of by products, and any of a zillion other things we need to be paying attention to.

And I am definitely not throwing stones here.  In some ways I do really well.  We recycle a lot.  We try to buy sustainably, because we can afford it.  The Geek Husband and I are trying to pare down some of the crap we hang onto for far too long because we grew up broke as hell.  I definitely need to start getting my ass up earlier in the mornings and taking the bus both ways.

I am, however, bad at getting up earlier in the mornings.

Mornings should be against the Geneva Conventions.

((Not a morning person may be the understatement of the century.))

We need to buy stuff with less packaging.  And we need to be less blasé about buying multiples of shit because we have so much shit we forget what we own.

That’s just us.

So, thank you for attending my TED Talk on how the GHWR and I need to get our shit together economically and environmentally.

Maybe next time we’ll talk about the more tenuous parts of ethics, like behavioral and artistic.

Now, I am going to bed and attempting to sleep for AN ENTIRE NIGHT.

Not holding my breath.

*I can deliver this lecture if you would like.  Maybe I should start doing videos about that short of thing on here, too.  History and Cultural stuff, not just ridiculous lists.

Comment if you want that to be a thing.

If you like what you read here, or want to help fund the reams of therapy I am undoubtedly going to need to break the hoarding cycle, please consider donating using the link at the top right of the page:  Keep Us Geeking, or checking out my Patreon.  Thank you!

Also, if you’d like to see what sort of fiction I write when left to my own devices, please feel free to check out my fiction Patreon, Nothing Nice Comes Out of My Head.