Thursday, April 8, 2010

Planting seeds of hope

Gardening is what I planned for April. I've already weeded and cleaned up the beds around the 'courtyard'. Half are south facing and the tulips and daffodils are 2 decimeters tall, in some cases. Yes, decimeter. haha. There is rain (or snow) in the forecast for today, but if the forecast is wrong...maybe I should phrase it as: IF the forecast is RIGHT, I won't have to water. Our May day tree is starting to bud which brings me hope.

In keeping with this year's tradition of  loosely interpreting my professional goals, I'm going to work on CULTIVATING myself, as well as my garden. I've done a couple Septembers of being a professional monk in an attempt to develop to self-discipline. It didn't work. HELLO! I lack the self-discipline to develop self-discipline!

Yesterday, while sick, I watched a program promoting Operation Smile. For $240 a volunteer medical team, using donated materials, can repair a cleft lip and palate in 45 minutes. In poor countries, these children have no hope of affording the operation and their disfigured faces prevent them from going to school because they get mistreated and often can't communicate clearly. The parents' sacrifice to bring their children to the clinic and then their gratitude was so touching. The idea that I could pay myself for developing self-discipline and donate the money to Operation Smile popped into my noggin. So my goal is to pay for 4 children's smiles this year. Now to figure out where to start so that I can achieve this lofty self-discipline goal with my self-discipline-less brain. Baby steps! (click to link to "What About Bob" clip - love it!). My original thought was to pay myself for doing housework but that is really too lofty (sorry, DH) so I am going to start by denying myself screen time from 2 to 8 pm. Every. Day. For the month of April. There are 3 weeks left in April so I'll pay myself $11.43 a day. I can't miss a day or else I won't earn enough to buy a smile this month. Hmmmm, I feel good about this. The thing I like about this first baby step is that it just creates a void in my day that I can fill with the good things that I should be doing instead of killing time in front of one screen or another. And once I start doing good things, I'll feel more hopeful that I can make a habit out of doing good things.

I'll keep you posted.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

you don't know but I have been lurking. I am so excited when you have written something new. My book club has been wanting to donate to something - or rather I have been wanting my bookclub to donate to something- operation smile sounds perfect.
Diane