The Intangible Benefit of Giving

In my last post I said I would write a poem each night throughout April. Turns out I write best when the incident or reason is recent and raw. So when the following happened last night, I wrote out the details during the train-ride home. Tonight, rather than poetry, I am writing a short story. Like any good short story, both the middle and the end relate to the beginning.

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I gave about $5 to a homeless guy about 7pm last night, almost by accident. He quietly shuffled beside me as I was waiting the the North Terrace tram-crossing. There was I dressed in my corporate attire, and him wearing a combination of various attires.

“Hey Buddy, can you spare a few dollars. I need something to eat.”

I looked at him, looked at my new Crumpler bag – then reached in and brought out my coin-bag.

“Put out your hand. Whatever falls out is yours.” … I poured out almost $5 in silver coins.

He was happy, and I must admit to feeling quite proud of myself. I give as often as I can, because NOW I can. I don’t earn a lot, but I remember when I earned a heck of a lot less.

I remember the time in my life when…

• … unemployment-benefits was my main source of income – for almost eight years!
• … the fortnightly payment being just enough that the bank would fine me for having so little in my account. I thought I would never win.
• … eating 5-minute noodles every night of the week, and sometimes for breakfast. At COLES, the more you buy, the less you pay. Bulk prices rock!
• … I was invited to go scrounging in a COLES dumpster with a guy who claimed you can find amazing stuff or expired cans of food! You can, but you don’t want to keep nor eat it. (And the best I ever found was a miniature pine Xmas tree.)

Yet when I had next-to-nothing, I still managed to push myself every day. I found a way to get a cheap jacket, pair of slacks, shoes, shirt, and brief-case so I could look decent each day when I visited the job-centre looking for that illusive job. The brief-case rarely had anything in it – except my ever-growing CV and a bottle of water.

I was invited to atend all the free training and courses available at the Commonwealth-employment-service: clerical, computing, retail. Some proved superfluous before the ink dried on the certificate. I attended interesting finance courses. Futures marketing is most interesting when geeks with worse suits sit than me .

And in the end I got offered a 3 week temp job with a government department. I am now a 14-year veteran. After 13years of doing an interesting variety of duties within 3 roles, I now have a job that challenges me, actually enables closure of some of my tasks (whereby I can say at the end of a day or week that something actually changed because of my suggestion, teamwork or autonomous work/input).

So every so often I give of myself.
I give up 5 hours a fortnight to the govt, and I don’t care. Sometimes a job just has to get done.  I give a free smile and ‘Hello ‘ to anyone who serves me Coles where I used to buy my $10-pack-of-5 noodles. And when I am somewhat-sure the money isn’t going to buy drugs, I give a homeless guy money for dinner.

Lunch with Mentors = Motivation & Money

Mellissah Smith has written a great post with which I wholeheartedly agree : Never Eat Alone

The best line from the article is…

A lunch date with someone can change your outcomes.

I find that lunch with friends is often a simple way to get motivated. Being able to talk through one’s ideas, thoughts and any general chit-chat is a great way to both vent one’s mind and then refresh and rebuild.

I take every opportunity to have lunch with a local entrepreneur whom I call my ‘mentor’ (though he doesn’t really know that).

We use the opportunity to share our current and future goals, then discuss where things might be modified or amended. If the opportunity arises or is deemed necessary, we combine forces to complete ideas.

So I agree with the sentiment that lunch equals money, but I primarily use the time to stay motivated!

That being said, I also enjoy quiet time to mull over ideas. Not mull in a bad way, but so as to think through new ideas to determine if they are cost effective, ethical (and I mean in line with both my own ethics plus to some degree what society deems morally acceptable) and what I really want to do.

Being able to step out of oneself to see the ramifications of a new venture is always important. Asking yourself if you really want to do a thing is vital when in the startup stage; There is nothing worse than being halfway through a project to discover that the result is not what you had in mind at the beginning.

That’s my two cents for the day. Check out Mellisah’s site, she has many articles worth reading! This is one that has reminded me to stay motivated!

Have to Laugh at Myself

I’m laughing on Redbubble! I’ve written an article that shows how my tshirts are more popular than my photography. It’s a phenomenon that I did not expect, but not begrudging.

Article includes tshirts purchased from my Redbubble collection within the last 3 days!

I Own the Twitter Fail Whale

Yeah, that’s right, I own the ‘Fail Whale’! Or rather, just one of the whales. And it’s not as big as we all thought it would be – because this local stationery store has them by the bucket-load, sitting on a shelf, waiting for twitter-nerds like myself. Here you can see mine:

No, they don’t sell them as ‘fail whales‘, but it was the first thing that popped into my head when I spotted this little blue whale. It’s actually an eraser, but I dare not use him to erase anything nor anyone!

I told the manager of the store I would give him some free publicity on the internet, and that I would shoot some cool photographs of the toys I bought. But I didn’t tell him about the significance of the whale. See more of the products I purchased today!