I Stopped Complaining (so much) and Started Giving
In 2020, I had just moved back to my home State of Mississippi, because my mother’s health was declining. I’d just started a new job, I was looking for a house, and my mother needed more and more help each week. Oh, and we were in a pandemic. So, the deadline to register to vote came and went, and, oops, I wasn’t registered. I started looking for other ways I could have my voice heard.
Every day, I carried 2–3 solicitations from candidates I would never vote for in from my mother’s mailbox into her house, many in other states. I started realizing that she had probably given thousands of dollars in recent years to these people I’d rather not have setting policies that govern my life. As I griped about this (to myself), the thought popped into my head that there was nothing stopping me from financially supporting at least some of the people I would be ok with setting policy.
And so it began. Ahead of the election, I donated to the party of my choice and a few strategic candidates in various races, then set up a recurring contribution. (For the record, I am now registered to vote here.)
Media Matters
I think the political situation wouldn’t be so bad if most media outlets didn’t cover races and debates over policy as if they were sports events, where what’s important is who “wins” or “loses” in the moment, not what larger issues are at stake or what the long-term implications are. The media outlet that comes the closest to really digging into the facts is NPR. Yes, sometimes their word choices and the way the stories are edited together reflects bias one way or another, but I think that’s inevitable because the stories are written and edited by human beings, and human beings bring their own viewpoint to the table.
Furthermore, the local Mississippi programming totally rocks. I say this as someone who has lived between Austin and San Antonio, near Atlanta, and in San Jose, CA. I’ve also travelled a fair amount for my hobby of showing dogs. The nice thing is that you can get our awesome shows online, such as my favorite, The Gestalt Gardener. So, after years of spending pledge drive time thinking “I really should donate sometime,” I became a sustaining member last year.
Conflicted About Conflict
When the war in Ukraine started, I was fairly critical of the fact that the world opened their hearts and wallets for Ukrainians, but it felt like no one cared about the Afghans, in a dire situation after the world cut off support when Al Qaeda took over and we withdrew, or the Syrians and Yemeni who have been displaced for years.
And then I checked myself — I wasn’t opening my heart or my wallet to anyone. My giving wasn’t influenced by race or region, because I wasn’t doing it. So I pulled up the World Vision site and found two children to sponsor. I chose World Vision because the amount that goes to administration is fairly low. I’ve sponsored children in the past from Guatemala and Thailand.
I didn’t find an opportunity to sponsor children in one of the war-torn regions I had hoped to help, so I selected two children that were in areas that lacked what we in the USA consider basic services. While I was there, I donated to their Ukraine fund, because they are also in desperate straits.
And Here it Comes
More recently, I took a couple of weeks off between my last job and my current position. I spent a lot of time binging on Medium posts, and I realized that, in spite of the click bait that’s hard to avoid, I was receiving significant value from it, including some of the material that eventually shaped my most recent post.
So I decided to quit switching browsers and devices to keep the firehose of content coming, and subscribe to Medium.
If you like my content, I’d like to ask you to consider using my member link to subscribe — this directly supports my writing.
Here are a few of the ideas I’m kicking around, in addition to the other 2 (possibly 3) parts of my React Hooks series:
- How to tell your story in a compelling way
- How good software design helps us make room for new hires
- How my years of training dogs influences the way I lead
- A deep dive into RTK Query’s createEntityAdapter
- How to develop test-first in a modern React codebase
And Finally
Whether you subscribe to Medium or not, use my affiliate link or not, I hope you come away with the idea that you can make a difference. Most of us who spend significant time on Medium are pretty well-compensated, in the grand scheme of things, so donating to things you believe in (maybe that open source project that has put so much money in your pocket?) may be a good place to start. If that doesn’t work for you, you can volunteer, plant a tree, or take a meal to a shut-in. Go make the world a little bit better today.
