Less Apathy

               More Motivation

Less Stress

               More Friends

Less Media

               More Art

Less Blame

               More Love

Hope you had a wonderful Holiday.
Here’s looking forward to better things in 2009.
<3 <3 <3

I’ve spent the last few days trying hard not to cough up a lung. I’ve been sick (Thanks, Fred) and generally feeling pretty miserable. To add to that, work has been rather slow, giving me inordinate amounts of time to sit around feeling sorry for myself, wishing I could be home in bed sipping tea and watching movies instead. I don’t particularly like indulging in this sort of self-pitying sluggishness, so I figured I’d do something to cheer myself up a bit. I spent about half an hour with the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam (which is friggin’ adorable, by the way) before deciding to move on to something more… useful.

I’ve always had two major problems with charity organizations in general;

1. Selectivity. I like the idea of helping people to help themselves, rather than simply blanketing poverty stricken areas with handouts. Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime. Makes sense, right?.
2. Transparency. With some charities devoting as much as 40% of their budgets to “administrative costs” I tend to feel uneasy about what exactly is being done with my hard-earned dolla dolla bills, y’all.

Over the last few months I’ve been hearing a lot of rumblings about the website www.kiva.org, beginning several months ago (Continue reading…)

Freecycle is one of my absolute favorite services on the internet. It allows users to post items to their local chapter that they would like to receive or to give away. The only rule is that everything must be free, legal and appropriate for all ages. It’s an almost completely green system in that nothing is thrown away, no paper is necessary for advertising and no new materials are used in creating new products. If you can walk or bike to pick up your items, it becomes a truly carbon neutral activity.

I use Freecycle when I have unneeded items that aren’t worth selling, but that I’d rather not send to the landfill. I find it preferable to dumping items into the [insert local charity here] donation bin because I can put my items directly into the hands of someone that can use them, rather than anonymously shipping them off to god-knows-where. I also have picked up a few useful things that were offered, most recently some clothes hangers, flower pots and vinyl LPs that I’ve been melting into spiffy containers.

Despite all its benefits, Freecycle and I have a love/hate relationship. Sometimes Freecyclers do such ridiculously silly things that I feel like I’d rather put all of my goodies in a trash bag and leave them by the curb instead. Of course, I’d never do something so wasteful, but I’ve been close!

I thought I’d list some of my personal Do’s and Don’ts for Freecycle. If you’re a member or planning to join, please consider these things so that you won’t be That Guy to your fellow Freecyclers.

(Continue reading…)