this month i donated to radiotopia. i mostly only listen to articles of interest, which isn't my most favorite podcast or anything, but i do really like it, and also, honestly, i just love podcasts! how did i only start listening to these a few years ago! oh man have i missed out, lol.
also, i'm realizing the importance of independent media, especially when it comes to news, but certainly for everything else as well.
this month I went to Tennessee with the girls. we had planned to take a trip together for our 30th birthday, but for some reason or another, we didn't do it. we did manage this year tho! we took about a 8 day trip, which included nashville, gatlinburg, the great smoky mountains, and knoxville. ac and i extended our trip two extra days to visit memphis.
this trip was great fun! it was our first time all traveling together and i think it went real,ly well! sure, there were little frictions here and there but i think all those smoothed over quite quickly. it was really interesting since while we grew up together, we haven't spent that much time together as a total group since school. even in college or after, we would reunite for a few hours for someone's birthday (or a wedding!) but nothing ever more than overnight.
i do fairly frequently say that we're friends now because we were friends then. but if we had all met now, we likely wouldn't be friends. certainly not all five of us, and i wonder if any pair of us would be real friends if we met now. it's not just the geographical thing, but we're all really quite so different.
outside of everything, for me, this trip made me want to refocus my work back into environmentalism, or at least environmental adjacent.
most everyone in my life now is so "normal" in their consumerism. j, of course, not withstanding. most everyone else (my family, friends, coworkers) seem to only not buy things because they can't afford it. need barely factors. i don't even mean real actual need, but just regular need.
being with my friends that week, being with them all day, i got to see habits like what, how, and when we eat and what we buy and for how much. it was interesting. the last few years, i've seen people around me live their lives and each time i feel a little void between us. that trip, being with them all week, i felt more of that void than ever. it made me wonder what i was doing, and why, and if it was really what i wanted.
and, honestly, yes; it is what i want. i want to be actively engaging in conscious decision making. and i want to be a good person, doing what i can to create a better environment around me. (environment not just used in the nature / green sense) and that environment means the people i surround myself with. i want to be more with people who inspire me to do better, be better, live better. not people who make me question my morals.
i certainly won't be throwing off my friends or family because they unthinkingly use single-use plastics or anything like that. but i can choose to engage more with the "green" community, whether thru social groups or professionally. and because i don't really like making new friends, making them thru work would be the easiest thing to help keep me on track.
so while i wanted to get away from environmentalism after algalita (because emotionally it was hard to see 8 years of work "down the drain", i think i may be ready to return again. the work at hbcfl makes me feel good, certainly, but it is a bit too far removed for me as well. i need to find a better balance of professional and personal fulfillment. i think, when possible, i would like to volunteer with food orgs when we're away. i really do hope to use this time to explore, not just the country, but myself. i want to know myself better and better myself as well.
this month, I did my annual giving to algalita for their long beach gives campaign. i've been wanting to help out more but, honestly, i've been too lazy to volunteer. plus, i don't have that many saturday mornings open either. but last month they put a call out for two types of volunteers: 1. for dsi kits and 2. to help proof their wayfinder society website. i wanted to do both, but the dsi kits were mostly being assembled during normal work hours so that was out for me. but i did put in a good number of hours testing their website, so i feel pretty good about that.
my time at algalita wasn't all great all the time, especially the last year + but i do still really value my time there and still feel very lucky to have worked there with so many passionate people. it was a life changer for me in many ways.
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gave another $26.62 ($25 plus the credit card transaction fee) this month to the moore institute for plastic pollution research, which is algalita's sister org. moore institute focuses on research, and algalita on education.
algalita blew thru their $5k goal (with $8,746 raised as of 9/22 at 9:30am), but moore institute is really struggling with only $396 raised of their $2000 goal. :( that $396 includes my donation, btw. tho i wish i had paid better attention when donating and i would've chipped in an extra $5 to get them over the $400 mark.
this month I donated $25 and a few other things to norfside long beach which is a group of "North LB locals providing resources to our unhoused neighbors." gave them the tent above plus a tarp, a cap, some toothbrushes, and menstrual products. i'm hoping that my mom will be able to part with at least some of her stash of hotel toiletries and guest toothbrushes, etc.
i like that they seem to have a reasonable amount of transparency on their instagram about how much money has been donated lately and how much they've spent, etc. they post photos of receipts which is pretty cool. i hope they're able to use the things, altho, unfortunately, the tent and tarp are both no longer waterproof. :( still, it's probably better than nothing.
this month i donated to PBS. why? because it's pbs!!! i recently thought about them because the throughline pbs sesame street episode rerun. sesame street was a pretty big part of my childhood, i think like for many kids
this month I donated to LA ist, which I only recently found out has a local radio station! I know I'd visited their website before, though not too often. but anyway, they also play NPR which I'm a big fan of altho, honestly, I don't really listen to too much, lol, since I have my many podcasts to get through. though some of my favorite podcasts are from NPR. it's kind of strange, I think, how little I used to listen to public radio since it totally seems like my kind of thing, but anyway, j listens to it all the time so that's where I developed more of an appreciation for it.
