Tag: Giving

Weekly Check-In

On By beinggoodeIn Four Facets, WeeklyLeave a comment

I’m starting to feel that holiday chaos.

 

  • Traditional Volunteerism
    • 5 hours Great Los Angeles Personal Statement Weekend with 826LA. This is my second year doing this event and it’s fantastic. We get to sit one-on-one with a student working on their personal statements for college applications. I think the best part is that they get to sit for a long time with an adult and talk about their future. This year I had another superstar student who was just a pleasure to talk to.
    • 4 hour Crisis Text Line Shift

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  • Charitable Giving
    • I used the “Charity Miles” app. Still hard to remember to turn on and slightly inaccurate but I raised $2.30 on two runs I was going to do anyway. http://www.charitymiles.org/

 

  • Personal Kindnesses
    • A coworker of mine was having a difficult family situation. I did whatever I could to make it easy for them and to check on them once they got home to deal with it. Hopefully I made their day even a little easier.

 

  • Self Care
    • This has been hard this week. There were more opportunities to volunteer this past weekend (I could have done the 826 Personal Statement event on Sunday as well plus the SoCal Special Olympics fall games were going on at several locations in Orange County) but I chose to rest and work on being okay with only volunteering a little over 8 hours this week. It’s too easy to feel guilty when it comes to self-care. But it isn’t selfish – it’s necessary!
    • I’m continuing my running training and bought the fabric for my marathon costume. Lots of planning and daydreaming go into running a marathon. Just 50 days to go.

 

Please share in the comments how you’re doing this week!

Weekly Check-in

On By beinggoodeIn WeeklyLeave a comment

My thoughts are with Paris and all of France tonight.

This week was pretty calm. Mostly focused my first marathon in January.

  • Traditional Volunteerism
    • 4 hour Crisis Text Line Shift
  • Charitable Giving
    • For my run on Sunday I finally tried the “Charity Miles” app. You use it as you’re running/walking/biking and they’ll donate to one of a dozen or so charities based on your mileage. It’s a very small amount and while I’ve had the app on my phone for months I usually forget to turn it on since I use a different app to track my runs. I chose charity:water and raised $4.71. The app was off by about half a mile and drained a lot of the battery but I’m going to try and remember to use it more often. Have you tired this app? What are your thoughts? http://www.charitymiles.org/
  • Personal Kindnesses
    • This week the personal kindnesses were more like kind interactions this week. I called Delta to try and use a voucher that wouldn’t work online to buy my tickets for January. I’ve worked in customer service for years and know that honey is the way to catch bees. I asked for a supervisor and kindly asked him if he could help me and without yelling or insulting I was able to get the extra help I needed. Please be kind to customer services workers. There is always somewhere to go from kindness, if you start with anger you have nowhere to go. Do you have a customer service kindness success story?
  • Self Care
    • It may feel like the opposite of care at times but I’m training for my first marathon. I ran 19.2 miles this past weekend as part of my training. I’m sore but good.
    • They say planning for a vacation brings as much joy as going on it. I have planning my trip for my marathon in January and it is bringing me a lot of joy right now. It’s nice to daydream about far off places. What’s your favorite part of planning a vacation?

Please share in the comments how you’re doing this week!

First Week Check-In

On By beinggoodeIn Four Facets, WeeklyLeave a comment

I believe there are four facets to the Being Goode Challenge –

  • Traditional Volunteerism
    • What it sounds like, helping in soup kitchens, tutoring, etc.
  • Charitable Giving
    • Giving or raising money to donate to a charity.
  • Personal Kindnesses
    • Little or big gestures to put smiles on the faces of others.
  • Self Care
    • Kindnesses directed at myself. More important than people realize.

I want to share with you here the progress I’m making in those categories each week. More than likely the charitable giving category is going to be on the lighter side and the others will have off weeks but it’s good to check in and see how I’m doing.

This week I’ve had a head cold, which has been more annoying than anything else. I have a standing shift with Crisis Text Line where I’m a counselor on Wednesday nights and as you saw me tweet I almost called in sick to my shift and happened to see the article about Jimmy Carter who is in his nineties and has cancer still being a hard core humanitarian and volunteering with Habitat for Humanity.

  • Traditional Volunteerism
    • 4 hour Crisis Text Line Shift
    • I track my volunteer hours through my company in order to earn a bonus charitable donation at the end of the year. This week I hit the top level at over 150 hours this calendar year. That’s about a half hour of volunteer a day. It feels great to hit this milestone.
  • Personal Kindnesses
    • One of my co-workers went on a job interview and as I struggle to get ahead in my career I made sure to support her. I checked in with her before and after her interview and made sure to keep her in my thoughts.
  • Self Care
    • This week mostly consisted of spending all my free time sleeping and drinking orange juice.
    • But I also started this blog, which is bringing me a great amount of joy after only a week.

Please share in the comments how you’re doing this week!