Politics

Ms. Rachel Lydia Rand

Musician | US Navy
Software Engineer
Political Candidate (D) 2018, 2020, 2024

2024 - Campaign for President of the United States of America (D) [suspended]
2024 - Campaign for US Representative (D)
2020 - Campaign for US Representative (D)
2018 - Campaign for US Representative (D)
Short Biography
Log

2024

Donate to Ms Rand for President on Raise the Money:

https://politics.raisethemoney.com/en/rrand

Forrest Gump doesn't like being called stupid and I don't like being called delusional. Being called ridiculous is fine with me though. After all, I do see the world as absurd. I do have a sense of humor!

Q: Is global warming / climate change real?

We've been hearing people debating this question for decades. I think we are missing the point by asking this question. Let me explain...

For the sake of argument, lets say that human civilization is 10,000 years old. We've been drilling for oil for a little over 150 years. Our society is completely dependent on oil. It is what allowed us to rapidly grow our population from 1 billion to 8 billion people. I'm typing on a plastic keyboard. I go out to eat and ask for a container and they give me a plastic clam shell etc.

The real question to ask is how many more years of oil do we have? 100? 200? 300? Whatever it is, it's a small mark in our 10,000 year history. What are we going to do then? Is it just going to be a dystopian Mad Max world? Do we have faith that a new technology is going to save the day? That instead of a Mad Max world, it will be more of a Jetsons world?

I believe that global warming / climate change is real. It makes sense that extracting all the oil that is under the ground and then burning most of it will have some consequence. People often say to me that the these weather patterns have been going on for billions of years. When I hear that, I think, yes, and extinctions happen too.

Q: What do you think about electric cars?

I first got exposed to EVs about a decade ago. I did Arduino and Android coding for a homemade 3 wheel car of a client of mine. He was also driving a Nissan Leaf.

In 2020, I bought a 2013 Fiat 500e. I bought it for $5,000 and the only thing I've done to it is put new tires on it. I drive it 2,600 miles/year. I've been working from home exclusively for 11 years. It gets me around town just fine. I can travel from Beaverton to Vancouver and still have enough of a charge to do things around my neighborhood afterward. Once or twice a year I have a desire to visit people out of town and I rent a car for that. The Fiat is excellent and from my perspective, all these Teslas around town are made to cater to the American dream of being able to go anywhere you want whenever you want.

Q: What do you think about our plans to go to the moon and Mars?

I'm a bit of a sci-fi nut (especially when I was testosterone based [giggles]). I've spent much of the last decade focusing on the idea that if we can have a sustainable outpost on Mars, if Earth got wiped out, life in our solar system would survive.

Perhaps my most favorite movie is Contact. I don't believe in the conspiracy theories that the government is holding back that we have contacted extraterrestrials. The best we can hope for from intelligent life outside of our solar system is to get a TV signal from them. As is the main plot in Contact, they could also send instructions to build things.

We have been looking for these signals and we have not found them. This leads me to believe that the reason they were not able to send a signal is because they don't have the power to do it. And that leads me to believe that fusion power will never work and our energies are going to be depleted rather quickly.

So, this year I've been saying "there is nothing out there."

Nuclear fission does work and we've been using uranium in space. If there is uranium on other planets or moons in our solar system, then we have a chance at inhabiting those planets and moons. If we can make machines and robots that can replicate themselves without any assistance from us on Earth, then they can just keep building and building stuff. Then we can send some people there to live in those "hotels". I don't think that is a recreational trip. Unfortunately, the only way to get to space is by burning fuel.

We are sending all kinds of stuff into space. We spend all kinds of time and resources to make all that stuff. I'm sure it's engaging and rewarding work for everyone involved.

Q: What do you think about AI replacing jobs?

We all need a source of income. Without it, we will eventually become homeless.

Who can I vote for that will ensure that my job will continue to exist?

Fear

OK, you get the point. Jobs are a means to an end. I need a kitchen table. I need a bread machine. I like going to restaurants. One of the phrases that I like is "human activity causes climate change." Civilized humans need things. Honestly, we are all born into this world with a debt. People made the houses we live in. The electrical systems. The roads etc. We make things harder on ourselves by working more to afford expensive toys and vacations. We put money into the stock market so we can "earn" interest.

My philosophy has always been that if a job gets eliminated, then they can help someone else with their job and we can therefore all work less and have more time to spend with our family. One of the problems with it is what we do with that extra time. Since we are not at work, we have to have something to do. If we spend that time spending money on something else, then all the sudden we've actually created a greater demand on labor.

I illustrated a similar point in one of my previous bids to US Representative. Imagine two different people, driving two different cars, 20 miles a day to go to work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, at the same place. A new technology comes on the scene that makes it so they only have to work half as much. So they split the work. If one of them works the morning shift and the other works the afternoon shift, they are still driving the same amount. If they alternate days, then half the car trips are made. But if they travel to that side of town on their days off, no savings is realized.

Q: Do you believe in God?

I am agnostic. I hope that you take the time to hear my thoughts on this.

My mother was a staunch atheist. She believed that all religious people were crazy. Both my parents were staunch Democrats as well. My father was a recovering alcoholic and got sober before I was born. We went to the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino once or twice a year. When I got into playing jazz music, the vibe around me was very much like Frank Sinatra w/ Count Basie at the Sands.

I always thought that mom writing off religious people as crazy was pretty rude. I started playing some church gigs in high school and also for a couple years while I was in the Navy. I read Autobiography of a Yogi during high school and that started my lifelong love of some aspects of Indian culture. Shortly after that, I developed a concept of "faith." I felt that it could not be defined. You either have it or you don't, or rather, you choose it or you don't. I think that concept has helped me be more graceful throughout my life. Perhaps it is opposite for others.

As far as what happens after I die? I like the movie Interstellar for that. I call it the 5th dimension. When I was young, I thought that this life may be some sort of "spirit factory." What is heaven? Is it a place where I can play cards with friends long gone and pet my old dog? A place where I don't have to wake up to an alarm at 4am to go to work so I can afford to take a plane trip to the tropics next month?

Q: What do you think about renewable energies?

People are working on this and generally, I support them. I call this the "lithium economy". The only paper I could find on how much lithium there is on Earth hinted at the lithium economy only lasting 50 years, perhaps even less. That may not be true, but until I see something different, I'm rolling with that number.

There is a place down the road from where I live where I interviewed for a software job that makes utility grade iron flow batteries. I hope that I will soon garner enough respect to be able to talk with the leaders in these industries.

I personally think that the only way to make our civilization "sustainable" is with fusion reactors and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. As I stated previously, I don't have a huge amount of faith that fusion is feasible.

Q: What do you think about the border wall with Mexico and immigration?

I call this OOP (Object Oriented Programming). Everything with a name has borders. You hold an orange in your hand. It's an orange. You peel it. There is orange peal and there is orange fruit. You know where the skin ends and the fruit begins.

The bottom line is that every country has borders and needs to enforce them. If all the Mexicans decided to come up here at once, it would be complete chaos! Beyond stopping complete chaos, the border is pretty stupid in my opinion. We are a nation of immigrants after all.

Q: What gender are you and what is your sexuality?

Since I'm a public figure, I'm happy to answer these questions.

I'm AMAB (a male at birth). I've been working on feminizing for several years. I started taking estrogen in September 2022. I sent an email to everyone I know, including my work the week before Halloween 2022 saying that I'm transitioning and that I would like to be called Rachel Lydia Rand and be addressed with she/her pronouns. When asked if I am a woman or a man, I say "woman" because I am not testosterone based. I rather like being a transwoman. I don't have any special desire to be called a woman instead of a transwoman. It always feels great to be treated like a lady though and to be addressed as Ms. Rand.

Sexually, I've been asking myself "Am I gay? I'm not gay, am I?" all my life. I've had several sexual encounters with gay men. Nothing much happened. They realized that I'm simply not into them. But those experiences definitely had me puzzled for decades.

The bottom line is that I'm attracted to women. When my last partner Cynthia died in 2019, the lack of femininity was devastating for me, so I began internalizing it. I absolutely love the way I am now. The process of coming out was incredibly scary and it was healing to pass through that threshold.

Q: What do you think about population growth?

It's a numbers game.

China put the one child per woman law into place and apparently it created a bad labor problem years later.

It's a Ponzi scheme. I'm 52 years old and have not had children. It wasn't exactly my choice not to have children. I could have chosen a partner to start a family with while I was in the Navy. My goal was to be a famous musician outside of the Navy though. (fame = fans = ability to make more music) I won't get into my full story here, but if I had been successful musically after the Navy, I likely would have started a family. I've had many delusional moments where there was fear about my genes stopping with me. I think that those feelings were irrational now.

I think that reducing our population is the most important way to fight climate change. There are simply way too many of us using too many resources. If we suddenly stopped having children, then we will encounter this problem down the road of having no one to pay into the Social Security system (and other related problems). To this I say that Social Security is a fake system that we built. I'm not saying money is just a piece of paper. It is a representation of energy certainly. But ultimately, it's a system. A carrot that keeps the bunny running.

I'm certainly not proposing any laws to do this. The idea came up last week that if people want to experience the transgender thing, then you know, killing your "seed" might actually help this cause. I do think that switching genders is incredibly interesting. Anyway. I'm looking forward to what others have to say about population growth problems.

Synopsis

I believe that Elizabeth Warren outlined a lot of our problems with her Two Income Trap book. I believe that Mr. Money Mustache has many of the answers to our over consumption lifestyles. Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization is an amazing book that has everything there is about energy in it.

There is nothing out there...

Even if there are beings on some distant world, what does it matter? I traveled all over the world playing trombone in the 90's (everywhere but Asia). Everywhere I went I saw people, animals, cars, houses, electricity, cell phones. Sure, some places have better land than others. Tropical water is about the best thing there is in the world. So, as far as I'm concerned, "there is nothing out there" even applies to this planet. We work so hard so that we can have dinner next to the Eiffel Tower.

Perhaps I'm boring, but I like cooking vegetarian curries for my lover and playing music in my living room. Going on walks in the neighborhood. Listening to a few music recordings. Doing some writing and coding on the computer. Having friends over for couples nights.

I'm running for the highest office in this country. My hopes are to inspire people to do better. To inspire like that, I need to be visible. I came up with the plan to run for this office 20 years ago when I was on the streets. I believed that I could do it and I got to work. If people don't support me, then I'll happily go back to my software engineering job with a sense of pride that I did everything I could to develop and carry this message.

With love and respect,
Ms. Rachel Lydia Rand

Q (Ms Rand): Do you still think this is delusional?

A (Ms Rand): Trump is leading the race. That is not a delusion. Ask yourself, would you vote for Ms Rand or Trump?

This page is interesting: https://www.tesla.com/impact/environment. It's a curiosity why the link to this isn't the first thing on their site. I'm certainly in no position to dispute this engineering plan. If this president gig was a black and white thing, then I'd code a computer program to do the job. I tend to side with how Vaclav Smil says that it's going to be harder than people think it will be to make this "sustainable" economy. I personally don't like the term "sustainable". Everything will end. Our sun will stop shinning and so forth. Everything is limited. I like the Neil Peart lyric "even love must be limited by time." Well, maybe you could argue against that! But I'm always wondering if people are talking sustainable for 100 years? 300 years? 1,000, 10,000? Oil isn't just a fuel, it's a substance we use to pave our roads and for the shingles on our roofs. One thing I think of is that these utility grade solar and wind projects are in remote areas. It's not exactly the American dream living in a temporary village with your family while you spend your days welding in the desert. We've also got to deal with this prediction of sea level rise flooding major cities. We'll have to build new housing for all those people. This oil economy has made us a little lazy. Do we have the strength to do all this work? The conclusion I've been noticing in the writing I've done on this page is asking the question if we really need to? Is this really the way we want to go about fixing these problems?

The unspeakable idea here is reducing our population. Is the world inheritantly better with 10 billion people than 2 billion people? When we were growing our population, we had more young labor than older people. We had a growing economy. It seems the only way we can keep growing like that now is by building robots. If we can get them to work with AI. But every robot we build needs a power source. What are we really doing here? I had someone the other day tell me that "government and corporations are bound to their economies, and their economies are bound to unconscious vectors of profit." My response was that individuals are bound to their economies in the same way. Can't we be smarter than simply chasing a carrot? The theory I came up with after I wrote this page is of Generation Z reducing our population by say 7/8. If we did that, in 40-50 years, the world would be filled with ghost towns and real estate would be very inexpensive. Economically, we would be in an entirely different system. Are we so scared of an idea like this that we can't even talk about it on a drawing board? It seems to me that the alternative to that is either becoming an uncivil society in a Mad Max war, or doing so much building of new cities and green technologies that all we are doing is servicing a machine. Why are we doing this? Because we like having a world of 10 billion people instead of 2 billion people?

The feeling I got from Elon Musk in that video is that electricity is so much more efficient that the "sustainable" renewable economy can support even more people. I'm not saying this is either true or false. Elon is just a few months younger than I am. I remember watching Star Wars in the theater 3 times when I was 6 years old. I certainly have respect for the things he's been working for. You might think this is all just crazy sci-fi talk, but I get very frustrated when people are talking about simply growing the economy. Believe me, I understand how much love and purpose people get from having children. Ever since I wrote this page, I've become super focused on how people talk about their families. Pictures of their children on their phones. Ensuring that our children and grandchildren inherit a CIVIL world is more than just a check on a ballot or a number in your bank account.

2018

From my physical copy of the Oregon 2018 Primary Voter's Pamphlet.

2020

This is from my 2020 campaign. I mailed 10,000 of these out in the fall of 2019. The publish date on this image is 2019-10-24.

Short Bio of Rachel Lydia Rand

I ran for US Representative in Portland against Rep. Earl Blumenauer in 2018 and 2020. I declared in August 2023 on my website that I’m running for president in 2024. I came up with the idea of running for US Rep and/or president when I started living on the streets in 2003. I was a national award winning jazz trombonist in high school in 1989 and went on to have a good career being a featured soloist in the US Navy fleet bands from 1992-2000. After I failed to make a living with my music and websites after the Navy, I eventually ended up living on the streets for a year from July 2003 to July 2004. While I was on the streets, I studied the math of collision detection to make an arcade game, the math of 3d environments and computer programming. I went on to have a successful career for nearly 2 decades doing software development. I’ve made museum apps for Harley Davidson and the Seattle Art Museum, coded on one-off electric cars and CNC machines, worked for a decade with Malarkey Roofing Products, worked for athenahealth, worked on the Sid the Science Kid website with The Jim Henson Company, etc…

Log

2023-12-01

The truth of my reality is that I wasn't able to "beg" for anything on the streets. I did make $60 in two weeks from playing pennywhistle. I certainly am a "needy" individual. I'm a worker. I played my trombone warmup every day for 2 decades. I've played Blue in Green and La Bella Dame Sans Regrets close to 10,000 times each. Well, you probably know all this.

Do people know of me? That is obvious. It would make sense for me to reach out to people and ask for donations. I'm simply too prideful, for lack of a better phrase, to do that. I don't bargain. I'm incapable of leading when dancing with a partner. I wouldn't be going to congress to make deals per se. I have a perspective on politics based on the experiences I've been through. My time on the streets. Really the whole thing. I certainly feel like a lot of work has been put into me to get me here. I had a friend say the other day that you don't just go and trash 50 years of work. Well, I'm not that optimistic about it all. If people start supporting me or I get elected to congress or the white house, my situation will be different and forever changed. When I think like that, I tend to savor every moment I have.

Hmm... What is the difference between listening to people on capitol hill and calling people on the phone and listening to them? Well, I wouldn't be asking for money, for myself at least. Would I be asking for money for my district? Possibly/probably. Would I have to get the best deal for my district? That's part of the gig. Do I care about making these deals? Definitely not. I'm a musician/internet artist. I'm concerned with where the world is going with technology and how we live our lives. OK, bridges have to be built. Roads have to be built. If my predictions about the future are correct, it will be harder and harder to do these things because of lack of energy. You know my platform.

I'm very, very resistant to making phone calls to ask for money. If I can generate $200/day in donations, I'll survive just fine. Why wouldn't I do this? I've done the work to get here. Confidence is hard for me. It was hard to have a website full of music and be so so disrespected that I wound up on the streets. You know my story.

Thara's thing with "family man" and "you have to give it away until you can keep it." The gospel thing. Churches. Patriarchy. Machoism. It's all a big turn off for me. Part of being in politics in this way is to be accepting of all of that. Being a transwoman, I do have an appreciation of being held by a man who is bigger than me. To feel that power and melt in his arms. The more I get into this experience, the more I actually crave that. I'm a very, very "submissive" person. It's an odd mix for politics. I can easily be bossed around by a 3 year old! Haha! I probably try to "demand" respect. There is nothing I can really do about it though. I can't force someone to respect me. I actually can't even change to a way that is more respectable. I'm 52 years old. This is what I am.

So, what do I do now? I'm reading this John Glenn book. For all I know, we may even be related. I haven't read the specific pages yet about how his campaigning went, but I get the feeling that he was more of a celebrity and not doing a shoe leather campaign. I'm in fear mode. Fear of winding up on the streets and dying actually. It's an interesting place to be in psychologically. I suppose I'm trying to work up the nerve to be so confident on what I'm trying to accomplish that I'm willing to actually die for it. Does my one life matter to the world that much? At 52 years old, is bagging groceries for other people more important than the entertainment value of my work? I did spend a decade cleaning toilets. It's not that I'm above that. If people were really nice and gentle with me and came over and gave me a big hug and said that the world really needs me to bag groceries and then take me into the store and get me setup, I'd do that. At this age, without that kind of love and respect, it's not worth it to me.

OK, perhaps I'm getting a little gloomy! Haha. I don't exactly know what I'm going to do right now. I do feel that the people I've been interacting with are both helping me and making it hard on me. I turned off my phone. I'm feeling too pushed around by people. If I start making phone calls and asking for donations, I may feel the same thing. Being pushed around by people. I have to work up a pretty thick skin to deal with that. If I had some people, well, even just one person, actively supporting me, things may be different. Right now, I am completely on my own in that regard. Do people know of me? Yes, definitely. This is not an illusion that I'm seeing out in the world. It's likely that people have been following me closely for decades even. Perhaps even my whole life.

I'm one person. I'm a big target. I can easily be destroyed. I get the feeling that people are supportive in a hands off way. Perhaps this whole phase of my life is about reflection of where I've been. A time that I can look back on when things are much easier. Another tool to ground me.

2023-11-30

People sure are acting weird around me out there. I'm not sure if this is presidential training, a joke, or just plane mean. I took my trombone to the bar a couple blocks away last night. I've been in this neighborhood for 9 years and have never been there. There were fabulous musicians there playing music that was very irritating to me. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it if I hadn't have brought my trombone and had some financial support coming in. It's hard to be joyous under these conditions.

So I left the club after an hour or so and got back home around 9:30. I woke up at 4am and felt like my old self and recorded another 12 minute piano improvisation. I feel a pull to get out of town and find... Well, I'm not sure. I record music and put my thoughts on this website like I always have. Would it really be better if I was in a different location? I don't need the excitement of that. I need to make a living. Everyone seems to be on their phones. We certainly all listen to music in our cars. We've been listening to recorded music all our lives.

Well, maybe I'm just complaining now. I do feel a need to see things in person politically. The facts of life are that you can't prove everything. No one can see the atomic particals. I could hit the road and with a lot of travel have a more informed guess as to whether our electricity is generated all from hydroelectric, coal, LP or nuclear energy. Do I trust the text books and internet on this? How much would all that travel really help my political mind? Perhaps we have enough uranium to last 10,000 years. I do not know. Perhaps oil will last thousands of years. It seems unlikely. We obviously burn through a lot of the stuff.

Is the president our cheer leader? People certainly seem to be attracted to confidence. I have a hard time with confidence. I question everything too much to be confident. That will never change. I'm a whistleblower. Does what we are doing make sense?

I'm still feeling a lot of pressure to detransition. I think I'd enjoy having sex as a male again. I don't know how possible that is now. I enjoyed some aspects of being male. I love the shift that has happened in me though. I can't say that I really relate to what I'm seeing as the "queer" community. I think it would be lovely to have a close trans woman as a friend. Perhaps that will happen again someday. There are lots of different people in the world. Part of being a politician is relating to all of them. I can only go so far with that though. I have my own style and preferences. I'll work on being more tolerant, but without financial support and time in my comfort zone, life becomes very cruel.

I seem to be getting a lot of negativity about the heels that I wear. The only major downside I see to them is that they may be more time consuming to construct. And they do wear out rather quickly. They have these fancy sparkly things on them that I don't care about. I like the open toe thing that allows my toes to air out. I'm working on healing my toe nails and I'm seeing good progress. These heel sandals are helping out quite a bit. The 2" heels are great. They are just high enough to slow down my pace but not so high that they ruin my back. I'm still sleeping on my futon and my back is fine. The futon isn't condusive to sleeping with a partner every night, but I've always enjoyed these futons. I don't see them as some cheap college furniture thing. It's a meditation thing for me. An eastern thing.

-------------------

Later in the day...

I have no will to push people around. If people want to push me around, I cannot stop them. I'm only one person. Am I respectable? More than some and less than others. I'm proud of the majority of the work I've done. I've done a lot of thinking in my life. Both of my careers were very intellectual. And my products are mostly digital. We all use digital products.

2023-11-29 - Revolution?

Remember when we were all giddy to get our hands on a touch screen device? Looking back on it all, most of the technology I use was made in the late 90's. Advancements have allowed me to run more monitors on the same computer. And the flatscreen monitors are wonderful. CRT's are not missed. If I hadn't have become homeless, perhaps I would still be using the same recording rig that I was using in the 90's. I don't think my computer would have lasted. My current computers are a decade old and running like brand new. It seems that the only point of making new personal computer stuff now is to fight hackers? It's fair that we have paid parking so that it prevents people from parking there and never leaving. That's the same concept behind property taxes. Of course the government needs its money too. It just seems like such a waste trying to collect it in all these various ways with all these machines. It's great that Oregon does not have a sales tax in my opinion. In my ideal world, it would be nice if people were playing more sports and music than making machines to collect money. I have been guilty of using the machines at the store to pay for my groceries. The cashier is using a machine though. If we went back to using cash, then we would have to go back to counting it. And then back to inventory on paper. That's no good. But fighting cyber criminals is insane! Creating a new USB jack is insane. I like the Apple lightning connector better than the USB-C, but whatever. Let's just stop here and do something more constructive! There must be a way to stop this technological arms race!

I've certainly had some strong imaginative delusions about cyborg technology lately. I get paranoid that I'm all wrapped up in it. I get the feeling that people can actually see what I am seeing. That my eyesight has been hacked from looking at computer monitors for decades. "They" know what is on my screen and have a good idea that I'm looking at the next letter being typed. They know what key I'm pressing to do that. The two cell towers in front of my house have perfect triangulation on me. And the way people and events are moving around me, there simply is no better explaination. My dad showed me a fiber optic cable in the 70's. My house could be wired with cyber optic cameras, but I find no evidence of that. I do suspect that there may have been fiber optic cameras in the rafters of my meditation studio in the 90's. How I would clear my mind of all thoughts and then a bird would tweet and I'd force myself to not think "bird". I'm sure that was good early training. I take all this with a grain of salt of course. It makes for a good book at least.

2023-11-28

It was my understanding that Earl is not running in this election cycle, so I registered to run for US Rep yesterday. I've always thought that the best path for me politically would be to do a term in congress and then becoming vice president. I'm not too keen on the idea of being a transgender president before having a female president. It seems that Marianne Williamson has walked a similar path to mine.

The last couple weeks have been very disorienting for me. I'm in one of the phases, which I've had many times before, where I'm finding myself not trusing humans. I've spent a good amount of my life in seculsion so that I'm not being triggered by things outside my controlled environment. Let me explain...

I was using my electrical meter yesterday and tearing apart this bogus amplifier I've acquired. One of the things I noticed about it was how the combination of odd screws and layout make it hard to get into the component that contains a brick of lead. A song I composed the other day mentioned how the 112 cycles per second of electricity running through the squirrel cage fan in my furnace was producing a note that sounded as a Bb. A lot of devices do that. It seems that there is a lot of misinformation out there. A volt is hertz is cycles per second. It's a wave form. The frequency of the ossilation and the amplitude or height of the waveform. Whether it is a battery producing this or direct from motion, this is what electricity is, is it not?

It's like calculus. It uses all those funny terms. All they are is computer programming, right? Loops, stored procedures / functions. Computer programs could have been written thousands of years ago and that was probably how they did it. Or did they use a more contemporary language and all this is just a smoke screen?

I do think my role politically is to be disoriented like this.

Are people "let in" on this game in life sometime in college? Once you are in on the game, then you just go about your life without a sense of worry. The game being things like being aware of my life and coming events. I'm sure it makes their lives less exciting than the life that I have had. It makes them good spectators and more relaxed workers. They probably feed off of the energy of watching my struggles.