Teleologically (is that the right word? if it is, did I spell it right? lol) I am nearly a day behind my friend Carlyn Girl, as I live in North America and she lives in Australia. We have both signed up to Australia's 1 Million Acts of Kindness (read more here) http://jonbearandcarlyngirl.blogspot.com/2012/05/one-million-acts-of-kindness.html , in order to provide encourgement for eachother as we each have pledged to perform an average of at least 2 acts per kindness a day.
The site is very good for giving ideas on acts of kindness, which I found quite helpful while looking through this weeks general guidelines. I really like how they provide the framework. That is important to someone like myself who sometimes suffers from lapses in motivation that can lead to complacency.
I DID make up some of my own ideas yesterday for things I hoped to accomplish, but I'm not the type to "plan ahead", so for those days when I can not really come up with an idea of my own that I KNOW I would like to do, it's nice to know that I can turn to the site for inspiration.
Day one's focus was supposed to be on women, tying nicely in with Mother's day I suppose, which passed on Sunday for both Carlyn and I. I find it interesting that the U.S.A. and Australia celebrate Mother's Day at the same time. That is not the case for a number of other countries, as I have found out mostly from some of my online friends.
I decided that I wanted to plan a time to visit my mum this month, esp. with Mother's Day and her birthday both falling in May. I already have a planned visit with her to go to the wine country region of the NY State Fingerlakes in June, as I have mentioned here previously (one of my goals for the year). That said, she does not know about that visit and has not seen me in about 3 or so months now. She had asked a few times when I was coming out next, so it was nice to call her yesterday and give her a concrete date that I will come to visit. I love my mum, and I really look forward to seeing her when I go to visit from the 26-29 of May. Mom's birthday is on the 29th.
I still know I should do something nice for my sister this month too. She is very important to me as well. One of the website's suggestions for Tuesday was to comfort a family member. While I doubt my sister, Heather, is despairing over the Washington Capitals recent elimination from the NHL Hockey playoffs, she IS a big Capitals fan, along with her husband David. I plan on writing her an e-mail later today just expressing my regret at their elimination.. and congratulating her team on the fine season they had. My sister's birthday actually falls before my mum's.. on May 24th, so I plan on doing something special then for her as well.
The other act of kindness I did for Monday was to buy the lunch meat for the sandwhich of a co-worker of mine who is always very kind to me. Whenever she gets a drink of Cranberry flavored water (her favorite flavor) she poors me a cup, and often she will buy a snack which she offers to share. This little act allowed me to say thank you to her for all the times she does that. She even brought me left overs from some of a kind of keish dish that she made for her family. It was very tasty and had egg, sausage, cheese, onions and ham in it.
I have completed one act of kindness for Tuesday.. I am part of a website called emma-watson.net, being a big Harry Potter fan. That is the site where Carlyn and I actually first met. I have a number of good friends who are dear to me from that site and one is my friend Tom, from England. I got to post a happy birthday message to him in a thread topic on the site. I hope he enjoyed the little note and has a wonderful birthday!
Carlyn, is very busy with school right now too, so I will try to make a more concerted effort to keep all up to date on the goings-ons of our small adventures. Sorry to all of you who prefer reading her posts and seeing her wonderful drawings of me! =D Knowing her as the task oriented person that she is though.. she'll still be very active here I'm sure.
--- Jon Bear </=O)
You're right, I have been lurking around the blog. I know you are quite capable but I read blogger like the newspaper. You are doing a great job.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that you have made an effort to be kind to the women in your life, I liked how you are going to visit your mother, write a kind email to your sister and how you bought lunch meat for a coworker.
Your co-worker reminds me of my mum. She likes to buy snacks and she shares them around with her colleague. She thinks it's ridiculous how some of the workers never bring food and stare longingly at people eating lunch. She always gives them a bite which they always accept.
Oh and just so you know folks. Feel free to comment on any of our posts.
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