Blog Action Day: Poverty

Today is Blog Action Day, and the theme is poverty. As I went on my errands I thought a bit about what I wanted to write when I got home. I woke up in my warm house, sick with some kind of hacking flu type thing and complaining about having to bundle up to take a broken MacBook to the Apple Store for the Genius Bar to fix. I got in my car, a fairly nice Matrix, a bit worn around the edges but running and full of gas, and made sure to make a stop on my way to the Mall for a “treat” of Starbucks. Still thinking about blog posts and hoping my MacBook would be fixed in time to write a few, I used my second favorite toy, my HTC Mogul, to record an Utter on Utterli about how bummed I was to be missing day two of the New Marketing Summit 08 due to the broken laptop.

I got to the Mall and had to leave the MacBook for repair for an hour. This meant a trip to Ruby Tuesdays for a budget lunch special, and then to The Body Shop to restock some things, thinking “Awesome! A sale!” as I walked in. The entire time I was running my errands, using coupons, looking for sales, and talking to people about who they would be voting for while I killed time, I kept coming back to this post, and what I wanted to write.

In the end I was shamed by my own myopic vision of the world today. Looking back on it, I realize that while money is tight, and I and my family are doing more with less (putting off haircuts, using coupons, looking for sales, choosing store brands, exercising warranties instead of being lazy and paying for a faster solution, walking more places, taking side jobs to help offset gas costs, etc), there are so many more families out there who are doing more with nothing.

In the end I went back out to the grocery store and bought a bag of food to drop off at my local food pantry, all the while wishing I could afford to buy ten bags. Then I went home and felt grateful for the little things that spoil me, from my internet connection that allows me to work from home to my dog who eats 40 pounds of dog food every two weeks. My hope for Blog Action Day is that you all found some way to give back, no matter how small, that you are all grateful for the things and people you have that make you rich in things other than money, and that you keep giving back as much as you can in the days to come.