Right now, I don't give as much of time or my money as I'd like to. I am in a good place with my budget but not quite there with my debt to incorporate a regular payment to any one charity. I used to support NPR every month but I was deferring on my school loan and a credit card bill so I had to end my membership and out that money towards the bills. I hope to incorporate a regular amount of money into my budget that I give to various charities soon.
And time? I have precious little. It's all I can do to sign a few letters to congress to save the wolves from BP or something similar. However, all the e-mails I now get in my inbox ever since I first tried to help Queenie the Elephant on Facebook is tempting me to unsubscribe from all the different Wildlife and Environmental and Free Press organizations I don't remember signing up for to begin with.
What I do currently to give back to society, or help it out, or do something for something else for a good reason is recycle. I have 2 trash cans in my apartment. One is for garbage and one for recyclables. And I do not have a mud room or laundry room to store it in, nor a car to take it to the recycling drop-off in the turnaround driveway at the Peggy Notebart Nature Museum. The "trash" sits in my house till I am able to get a ride for my garbage from someone; foist it off on my do-gooder friends, Stephanie and Julie, because they have recycling pick-up in their neighborhood; or I walk it to the drop-off myself and try to get a little fresh air and cardio while saving the planet.
And now I also offer my comedic services at fundraisers. So far no one has found my comedy that helpful but I am supposed to do a a stand-up show at a prison to cheer up the inmates, (or warm them up for some Bible teachings). However I just found out the prison is on lock-down because of an outbreak of H1N1 virus so we'll see.
My dear friend, Marena reminds me that God made me funny to lighten the burden of others, which I do at least once a day. That's a good start. I wish I could make the whales and the wolves laugh while they try to cope with their vanishing habitats. I wish I could make corporations giggle themselves into fits of caring more about people than the bottom line. I'll keep trying and also write the occasional check.
