Perspectives from a City-fied Southerner

Happy 2010!

Last night I spent $67 ringing in the new year. Pretty good, right? My best friend, Christina, and I had a great night dancing and successfully avoiding girls who might spill their $8 cocktails on our carefully selected couture. We got back to her house, via a surprisingly fairly priced taxi, and each ate entire Tony’s pizzas that tasted gourmet under our influences.

When I woke up this morning I was so happy to have had such a good night. Then while I was laying on my couch I started thinking about how lucky I am. Lucky that I could afford to go out and enjoy a night on the town. Lucky that I was snuggled warm under a blanket in my nice, heated and conveniently located house. Lucky that if I want a glass of water I can just go to my kitchen sink and don’t have to walk 6 miles to a polluted water source. Lucky that I can sleep soundly knowing that it is quite unlikely that I’ll wake up to the sounds of bombs going off somewhere in a not so distant area.

Everyone I know has at least a short laundry list of goals for this year, myself included: get a job, move out of my parent’s house, get back on that exercise regiment. I could go on for a while. To this list I’m adding being thankful everyday that I can live the life so many others would love to live.

We should all be helping those that don’t have as much privilege as we do. But we know that time restrictions and dozens of commitments it can make it very difficult and fiscally challenging to do so. There’s a great post over at Cranky Fitness about setting smaller, more practical goals to reach your overarching goals. To help others more than I did in 2010 here are some small steps:

• Make Click to Give your homepage and click everyday
• Volunteer at a local food bank a couple of hours a month with a friend
• Save your change from the grocery store and give it to an organization that advocates for a global south cause you care about
• Make a brief call or write a short letter to your congressional representatives about a local issue that is of importance to the less fortunate members of your community

What are some of your ideas for baby steps to help others in 2010?