This is what I've learned this week. At a time where the news is just filled with negativity, it's really hard to imagine that there's anything positive out there.  It really does seem that people are only out to serve themselves and we're consuming ourselves into the ground - he who dies with the most stuff wins!, or so they will have you believe.


There are some things that help remind me that people are decent and care.  First and foremost, the deviantART community.  While we certainly have our level of drama at times, we are united in our love and protection of our community and when someone needs help or support.. you guys come out in droves, capes and all.  It's inspiring and enlightening and so amazing to me, as it generally involves reaching out to complete strangers.  However, I've come to realize over the years that they aren't strangers.  Regardless of whether you've met them, or know them IRL (in real life), they are deviants and with that, bonds are formed.

There's also the Weekend to End Women's Cancer that I participate in every year.  This will be the 10th year of the event, in Toronto, and the 10th year I've done it.  During this event, I'm not only surrounded by people all pushing through 60 kilometers for a collective reason, but we're met along the route by strangers, cheering us on, offering us snacks or hydration and generally just being amazing. I've often referred to this event as the one that restores my faith in humanity. 

The last couple of weeks, I discovered something new, well new to me.  *gimp and I do a lot of renovating.  Our house is old, and we are essentially gutting it and redoing it, piece by piece.  We aren't made of money, so we save up for big projects, look for sales and buy pieces as we can until we're able to tackle a project.  As a result, we also end up with left over material.  One of these projects was our backyard, for which we purchased Natural Stone tiles to create a patio.  Once we were done, we realized that we didn't like what we did and ripped it apart and used only half of what we initially bought, leaving 300 Sq ft of tiles left.  They weren't cheap and they're heavy and were taking up room where we wanted to build a shed but what to do? We also had boxes of black granite tile we we purchased on a ridiculous sale, intending to use them for our en-suite but we've since had an aha moment and realized, that wasn't the way we wanted to go.. again.. what to do? Some would say sell it all, and I can appreciate that sentiment but I really don't feel like heckling pricing and really didn't want to throw anything out so after some quick searcing, I found Freecycle.org and my local Freecycling group! Freecycling is amazing! there's an entire community of people giving things away and I quickly posted about the granite and patio tiles I had available.  Not only did they both go to good homes, they went to great people who I now have made friends with.  They are going to build amazing things with the materials and I've saved them the cost of pricey renovation material.  It's not all selfless! Someone was offering up some excess flowers they had and I've got some colourful additions to my garden.

People donate things all the time, I do get that. I certainly donate things quite regularly, especially when we're cleaning things out, however, freecycling is different.  You get to meet the people and hear about how whatever you donated is going to be put to use, and, in my case, I get to see pictures!  Do I think every freecycling experience is going to lead to lifelong friendships? Not at all, but I can't deny the amazing feeling I have right now, knowing that I've possible made the impossible project a bit more possible for someone. 

I feel like I've racked up some Karma points and it feels pretty good.

Tell me about what restores your faith in humanity? Do you know of other programs similar to Freecycling that I should know about?

Would love to hear from you



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