change the world, twenty minutes at a time

Yes, I’m reaching a bit here. But at least I’m reaching, right?

Short of ideas on how do make an impact yesterday, I logged on to freerice.com, like many others posed below, and answered silly questions long enough to raise 1,000 pieces of rice for the hungry.

This is an easy out, but it’s a positive move anyway. Affirmation: if I can’t find any other way to change the world, I’ll raise some more free rice for 20 minutes.

Today on my way home from dropping the big kids off at school, I stopped and dragged a fallen tree branch off the road. I could have gone around it, but sooner or later someone had to get out of their car in the rain and drag the branch off the road. So it was sooner.

I’ve been trying to be more available to my kids. Suprisingly, they’ve been accepting of my help, and it’s actually rather draining. I guess they needed my help more than I thought.

Complain less; do more. That’s a good mantra for the rest of the week, eh?

Today for my 20 minutes, I registered with Kiva.org (I know, I’m way behind Rin and Jenn here…) and signed up for optoutprescreen.com which makes me ineligible to receive offers for credit from any of the major credit card companies. This will hopefully drop the junk mail considerably.

I went to Wal-mart, to pick up prescriptions, an a few odds and ends. Turns out, Cheez-its were on sale, so I bought four boxes. And my daughter loves popcorn, so I bought a box of that. And some cereal. And a pair of reading glasses. And some other stuff.

At the checkout line, I realized I had not brought my canvas bags into the store. I thought about stepping out of line, but really didn’t want to waste the time. Then it was my turn.

“Paper or plastic?”

“Neither.”

“Neither?”

“Yes, Neither. I don’t want any bags. I’ll carry it all out.”

“You sure, mister?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

She cashed me out, and I started stuffing things into my pockets. I put on the reading glasses. Then I started gathering all the boxes into a big, tall stack, like they used to do at the library before OSHA. The cashier had to put the last two on for me. I thanked her, and made my way to the car. As I walked out of the store, lots of people turned to look. I thought of explaining, and then realized the situation was quite obvious; I had no canvas bag, but I didn’t want to use any new bags.

I made it to the car just fine, and loaded everything into the trunk. Yes, it was difficult, and I felt self-conscious, but that’ll teach me for leaving the canvas bags in the trunk!

Today, I spent 20 minutes bending the ear of the person sitting next to me at dinner.

The person turned out to be the new Director of Worldwide Marketing at Microsoft for Communication Solutions. In other words, she was taking over the job of selling Microsoft Messenger and VOIP. The focus is on corporate collection of messaging data for the government. I spent 20 minutes trying to convince her that she was making V-2 rockets for the bombing of London. She got the analogy, but didn’t buy the message.

Not every 20 minutes changes the world. But I really felt like I was fulfilling some kind of destiny, to give her the message that the world would be better with MORE privacy, not less.

We’ll just have to see what happens.

These aren’t great shakes, but at 20 minutes a day, we can’t expect too much, right?

In the past week, we have successfully gathered up all the out-grown clothes from the kids’ closets, as well as all the un-worn clothes in the adults closets (if we have something a whole year and you still aren’t wearing it, chances are it would have a better life in someone elses closet, after all), and delivered it to the local chapter of St. Vincent de Paul.

We’re about half-way done with culling the unwanted books from the library and basement (this is a harder job in our family; books are more precious than clothes to a family of nerds) in preparation for the local library book sale.

Today for my 20 minutes, I did the math for the cost and carbon load of taking a shower. I’ll post it on the “make a smaller footprint” goal, and then link it here.

So my wife and I went to a dinner party last night at a friends house, where we met another lovely couple and talked about life, business, factories in china and…saving the world.

I was shameless. I brought up Kiva.org. I pushed my manifesto. I did everything I could, within the realm of polite, to urge these fellow upper-middle-class affluent do-gooders to do more good.

At one point, I honestly felt like Abigail Adams, pushing the unpopular (but morally just) positions of emancipation and suffrage with the passion of a zealot at her luncheons in Paris and Boston.

Every person we add to the cause is worth hundreds of “20 minutes”, right? So shameless proselytizing is the best leverage I can find!

I noticed (happily) that I wasn’t the only one hyperventilating under the weight of the world this week.

I have also embraced the fact that our goal is to improve the world in small moments, but not necessarily every day. Life, after all, goes on.

But it is energizing to find myself searching for those 20 minute opportunities every day. If I can’t put in 20 minutes, I seem to mentally resign myself to doing 40 minutes the next day.

But it’s the little things, too, that change the world for the better. Smiling when you meet someone. Letting the other person go first at the stop-light. Slowing down in this race to the school or the grave. In those small ways, we can improve the world all day long.

My ledger is full of opportunities to give back more. Lately it’s been working on Optical standards and education; not glamorous, and nothing I expect my fellow 43T’ers to get excited about, but important improvements, nonetheless. I’ll keep looking for “big wins” like Jenn, Rin and Calissa, but I’m not going to stress about it.

After all, I’m not the only one with the weight of the world on his shoulders, am I?

Today I did some little things. I called a couple of magazines and catalogs and told them to take me off their mailing list. I did a little more math on my environmental baseline, and I researched green communities in my area. And I told a few more people about this goal.

I also found out that if Texas were its own country, it would be the 7th largest polluter (in the global warming sense) in the world. Now consider the two adages: “If you want to be president, you need to win in Texas.” and “If you want to be re-elected as a Texas legislator, you can’t be pro-environment.”

Suddenly the politics of global warming makes more sense.

Perhaps an outreach program to our 43T’ers in Texas?

Oh, and one other thing. A few months ago, I met a woman from Texas, and I tried to share with her my (admittedly zealot) opinions about the environment, economy, and especially global warming. Her answer? “None of that matters, my dear. Long before those things really start to effect us, Jesus will return and there will be the rapture. Don’t worry about the planet; we don’t need it much longer. Worry about your relationship with Jesus.”

Sigh.