Year of Giving

Today is New Year’s Eve.  Not my favorite holiday.  I don’t know why, but somehow I think it is overrated.  There is so much build-up to something that to me always turns out to be rather anticlimactic.

By the way, before I forget, I have started to manually update the statistics page.  Although it is not what I envisioned, it is a start and I hope to improve it soon.  But for now, you can start to get an idea of some of the quantitative data that I am collecting.  I hope to update it at least once a week.

I was up early this morning…then took a nap and would you believe it slept till 1pm!  This was not good, as I had agreed to meet with someone at 1pm, so I woke up to my phone ringing, dashed into the shower and ran out the door.

After my meeting, I was walking home and thought I would jump into a coffee shop to give my $10 away.  It was cold outside and writing in my little journal while it is cold and drizzling is not a good mix.

I found Christopher sitting by himself barricaded behind his laptop doing prep-work for a 10am call that he agreed to do for his employer tomorrow morning.  That’s right, he is going to be on a conference call for work on New Year’s Day.  Give this man a raise!  (or a day off!)  Christopher is a technology and strategy consultant with PWC. 

I asked the soon to be 32-year-old what he was going to do with the $10 and he paused and thought for a minute.  His pensive face gave way to a smile and he said, “I am going to add the money to a donation that I am going to make to a group called FAIR Fund.” Earlier in the day, Christopher had met a woman who worked for FAIR Fund.  According to their website, “FAIR Fund works internationally to engage youth, especially young women, in civil society in the areas of anti-human trafficking, domestic violence and sexual assault prevention.” I thought this was a very noble and altruistic decision.

I later learned that his decision to give the $10 to a deserving cause was not out of character.  A past Peace Corps volunteer based in Querétaro, Mexico, Christopher understands the value of giving.  Having lived in Mexico myself, we swapped stories about our experiences and found a lot of commonality.  In fact, Christopher knows something about blogging too!  He used to have a movie review site called the Mad Black Critic, where he would give very structured feedback on films so that potential viewers could determine if it was worth their money.  For example, he had a category called “social contribution factor” that would evaluate the social impact (positive or negative) that a film might have.  All in all an interesting venture. 

I enjoyed meeting Christopher.  I love that he chose to use my $10 to support such an important cause.  I hope that he will keep in touch and be inspired to continue his altruistic behavior.  Happy New Year everyone!  Be safe.