This week’s highlight? The thrilling ritual of emissions testing… making sure I haven’t turned my car into a smog-belching beast before they’ll let me renew the plates.

My timing was perfect. The facility is a few towns over in the burbs which is perfect because you want those catalytic converters all heated up. Which meant it made sense to apply a little extra throttle along the way too. You know, to pass traffic and inspections more easily.

I left 20 minutes after they opened. There is often a rush at opening, while people stop in on their way to work. By the time I arrived, there were no lines at any bay, just people waiting to get their license plate sticker. I pulled right in, rolled down the window and began the inspection.

“How many miles?”

Me: “8,549.” The car’s six years old, and not a daily driver.

He frowns. “You mean 85,000.”

“Nope. I work from home, eight-five-four-nine.”

He leans in to check, unaware I’ve been reading numbers for years. That’s when he spots the starfighter on the steering wheel.

“Is that an X-Wing?”

“It is,” I say, stepping back so he can plug in his reader without me somehow corrupting the process.

He circles the car, stripes, interior piping, badging. All factory-consistent, but tweaked to look like Poe Dameron’s X-Wing. More than once, people have asked if it’s a rare Dodge variant.

“You like it?” he asks, like I’d gotten it accidentally.

I give him the short version: Star Wars events, track days, the droid on the trunk. I skip the verbose deep dive.

He studies it for a beat, then grunts. “Hnmmh… I don’t like it.”

I certainly chuckled lightly at the absurdity. First, it’s plain rude. Second, my car gets compliments from nerds and kids, but I made it for me. I drive a spaceship, and maybe he likes lifted trucks. “Then you shouldn’t get one.”

Never accept criticism from someone you wouldn’t go to for advice on that subject. If I take a novel to Stephen King, and he says it sucks, that’s fair. But if he tells me how to dress, he’s outside his expertise.

This is especially true with your entrepreneurial endeavors. Well meaning people, people who love you, will speak out of fear to tell you what you should do. My mother sent article after article of plane crashes while I prepared to enter the Air Force. They aren’t trying to crush a dream or your spirits, they just want you safe.

And never ever accept criticism from someone you don’t know. The human default to surprise and difference can easily lead to a fear reaction. Unfortunately, people also tend to give more weight to negative feedback, even from unqualified sources. Social positioning and negging are both techniques people use to give themselves power in a situation. Fortunately, you can literally laugh at it.