1 Good Deed 2day

To love means to open ourselves to the negative as well as the positive - to grief, sorrow, and disappointment as well as to joy, fulfillment, and an intensity of consciousness we did not know was possible before.

— Rollo May

Yesterday

This Valentine’s Day I wanted to do something spectacular…something different, and something worth more than the card I bought for my Love containing a minuscule amount of post-consumer recycled material for marketing purposes. (As an artist I don’t even know why I heeded to consumerism and bothered to purchase something I could’ve made far more beautiful with my own 2 hands—but that’s another story.)

So this Valentine’s Day my 1 Good Deed was to have a vegan Valentine’s Day. I had fruit for breakfast, a vegan lunch of chickpea masala and vegan chicken salad at work, and for dinner…vegan sushi! Vegan sushi? Well I ordered something called a Mermaid Roll that had fried tofu and spicy seaweed salad! Mmmmmm!

Today, I continued the veganism as well!

Although I am not going to be a STRICT vegan and continue to eat (for now) yeast, honey, and things that may have at some point in time touched meat or dairy, I am proud to lower my carbon footprint even farther than the all-natural-organicness it is already, and not having to always desperately search for ethical and sustainable meat and seafood (which is pretty damn hard to come by nowadays…) —Hell, I am lactose-intolerant anyways! ;)

What’s your 1 Good Deed 2day? Share with me and my puppers Jameson!

A text message from the talented musician Dani Shay:

“I just had a great conversation with a man on the bus.  He thanked me before he left and said he felt like he learned from my outlook.  We were talking about looking past  peoples’ appearances and trying to see the person underneath.  He said he judges people too quickly and wants to stop… I expressed that when we stop seeing all of the things that make us different from others, and try recognizing the things in them that are just like ourselves, we have a lot more compassion in our hearts for them.  He was kind and endearing.”

Check out her music on YouTube.

Today’s 1 Good Deed 2day comes from khooo.tumblr.com. I stumbled upon this jewel on her facebook, and she gave me permission to post it up! We kind folk need to band together! Great job Kelly! This is amazing!

“So last week, Chicago got hit with about 20 inches of snow.  The night after the blizzard hit, every car parked on our street was completely covered in a mountain of snow.  Noticing that a girl needed help getting her car out, my roommate and I spent an hour, along with 5 other strangers who didn’t know this girl at all, and helped dig, pave, and push her car down the street.”

One of my neighbors had moved out a couple of weeks ago. He was going to throw out a lot of canned food he did not want.

The boxful of food sat on my table for a while because I didn’t know where to bring it, but had to give it to someone—just knew it. 

Today I went with a gut feeling. I donated the goods to another in my neighborhood: a lady I had helped get day care for her two young daughters. A single mother who works all day to support them making $8 an hour. My mother was her, and I remember watching how she struggled…

I left the boxful of cans there because I knew how much she would appreciate it. :)

There’s this shy boy, very shy boy, who rides my bus. He dresses queerly, mismatching legs crossed, glasses and all unfurled hair something beautiful in his seeming indifference to a stigmatizing world—though he often looks a bit frightened. In the past I have said hi, knew it had to have made a difference because somehow I identify…

Today, a simple act again, when all else exited before him while he sat, I walked up, asked him if he’d like to go first, waited until he hesitantly left, watched a timid sorta smile flash.

On the way to work…

Found a penny, picked it up, gave it to March of Dimes to have good luck. 

Later on today…

Told my mail carrier I appreciated her service—after we chatted about the declining recycling rates in our neighborhoods, of course. :)

Note to self:

“Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.” -W.B.Yeats

The title is a true story.

Today, in my usual trash digging ways, I made a conscious effort to recycle every can or bottle in each and every trash can I passed from my bus stop at UCF all the way to work on the other side of campus…

4 plastic bottles,

1 plastic cup, and

2 soda cans

got recycled instead of

piling up in landfills

—you can always wash your hands.