Welcome back to my oft-neglected blog! Seems like writing is becoming less of a passion and more of a hobby lately. And that’s okay! I just have to trust that there will be time for me to return to writing for longer stretches of time, sometime in the hopefully-not-too-distant future.
But today, I wanted to write about my birthday wish.
If you follow me on social media at all, you’ll notice that over the past year I’ve become enamored with the organization Random Acts. Founded by actor Misha Collins of Supernatural, Random Acts’ mission is to conquer the world one random act of kindness at a time. And boy, do we need kindness in this world!
Over the past year or two, my participation in Random Acts’ events has caused a serious shift in my attitude toward people and the world at large. I’m the kind of person who can easily revert to snarkiness and negativity. It’s my way of distancing myself from things happening in the world that, quite honestly, I don’t want to accept. It’s so easy to react harshly to hatred and injustice, meet negativity with negativity, when truthfully, that doesn’t really help anything or anyone. Sure, it might have made me feel better, however briefly. But that’s all.
Discovering Random Acts changed all of that for me.
I live and work on the internet (my near-constant neglect for this little blog notwithstanding!), so when I learned how Random Acts came to be, and realized what a wonderful example they are of something GOOD that can happen because of the internet, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. And it turns out that focusing my energy on something with a positive outcome actually DID make me feel better! And it made other people’s lives better too, if only for a little while.
So what does this have to do with my birthday?
One of the things I’ve done recently is take part in ongoing fundraising campaigns on Crowdrise.com–most recently to raise funds to help struggling families in Syria. I learned just a couple of weeks ago that Crowdrise enables you to start your own fundraiser on their site using your upcoming birthday as the flimsy excuse needed to get the ball rolling. So that’s what I did.
For the next month, my intention is to post on my blog every day (well, every week day, most likely) with a little more to share about Random Acts and how to choose kindness in everyday life. I was privileged enough to be able to speak to my local community about Random Acts through Pecha Kucha just a few weeks ago, and so most of my posts over this next month will be expanding on my talk from that event.
In the meantime, I’d love it if you’d take a look at my Crowdrise fundraiser. Any contribution amount is welcome ($10 minimum online, or contact me for an offline donation), and sharing is very much appreciated.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you choose kindness.