First Day of the Big Project

The plan is simple, really. It’s January 1, 2001, and I’m pledging to give something away every day this year. Even if it’s just a pencil to my student who needs to take a Scantron test— one thing every day. I’ll blog about my giveaways here.  Because I am typically a rule-follower, I feel the need to set up some parameters for myself.  I’ll start with three, but I’m sure to add more as the year unfolds:

1.  It doesn’t have to be monetary and it doesn’t have to be momentous. In fact, it may be the smallest, most insignificant gesture of the day.  No pressure there. Phew. 

2. If I mess up, I can get back on the wagon. This is a cardinal rule of dieting, I know, and I think it would apply here as well.  Again, this relieves a little pressure, which begs the question, why do I feel so much pressure about this? How hard can it be to simply give something away for 365 days and blog about it every, single day? Well, let’s just say that a commitment to a plan like this has every possibility of waning. I’m sure there will be boring days, days when I just don’t feel like logging on, days when I’m feeling selfish, etc. 

3. I won’t get preachy and didactic about giving. The fact is, I plan to get something out of this for myself. For one, I will de-clutter my home by giving away clothes and other items I no longer use. For another, I will have a reason to write every day, something I love and hate to do at the same time. Finally, I’m sort of expecting that a heightened awareness of all the possibilities for giving will change me in any positive way. Can’t really put my finger on that one, but how could it not?

To get started, I planned to give $10 today on donorschoose.org, a website where teachers post about items they need for their classrooms. Starting small, but close to my heart. The website, though, felt overwhelming. So many classrooms, wanting so many items.  Having no real way to sort through the requests, I narrowed by subject (English Language Arts), then by state (Ohio), then by city (Cincinnati) and found a great cause.  I donated money to buy copies of the third book in the Hunger Games series, Mockingjay, for a local classroom. It felt good until I realized that my $10 is not going to go that far. But it’s tangible at least, it’s one book.  Had I not purchased my own copy of Mockingjay on Kindle, I guess I could have also mailed her that. Well, that’s an idea for later, donating books.  I certainly have plenty of them.