I have yet to maintain any consistency with this blogging thing. Over the years I have started many blogs only to leave them twisting in the wind, abandoned, and craving attention. For a while I had a pretty successful little personal fashion blog focused on petite fashion that mirrored one I wrote for Beep, a Paddock Publication rag. That fell to the wayside after I reentered the full-time working world from being a freelancer.
Holding back from blogging is most likely a result of all the filters that I, and society, place on me. Is this appropriate to blog about? Is this significant enough to put in writing. Will people think I’m a whiny prat for complaining about an encounter or expressing general discontent? Am I being a self-promoting asshole for constantly plugging my own kind acts? And so on, and so on. This whole practice is like trying to navigate a friggin’ minefield of logorrhea. BLARGH!
Now that I have splattered some of my brain matter onto this page … on to being a self-promoting asshole …
My company has large town hall style meeting every few months. Whenever these take place they order way too much food for us to consume while we huddle in conference rooms throughout the office to watch a live stream from the Hollywood offices. After the meeting we have a little Q&A, providing feedback. Following our last town hall I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of my coworkers were putting an emphasis on wanting to do more outreach and charity work focused around grassroots campaigns and areas that they were personally passionate about.
Once we all settled back at our desks a coworker approached me and asked if I would find a local shelter where the company could donated 20 whole, untouched pizzas to. Of course! Now this would be much easier if we were located in Chicago proper instead of way out in the suburbs where public transport barely roams and you are generally screwed unless you have your own vehicle. Regardless I hopped on the ol’ internets and searched away. Within 15 minutes I had found a shelter and arranged to bring the food over with my workmate that volunteers with me.
I made it back to work, covered in sweat and out of breath, only a few minutes late for my next meeting.
Now this #GetKind act wasn’t planned, or even necessarily initiated by me, but it struck a chord within me. In the suburbs of Chicago there are not enough organizations to deal with the population that is homeless, at risk of becoming homeless, or that needs emergency shelter/relief. Suburbs don’t equal posh, and I think a lot of individuals either forget or don’t realize that. The number of times that as a homeless teenager I slept in parks or alleys are too many to count. Back then there were no shelters or assistance available to people like me. So the fact that I was able to find Journeys The Road Home within a few minutes brought a little joy to my heart.