I’m brewing thoughts on a couple of things that are different and blending together at the same time, and I’m soliciting opinions.

A couple of catalysts:
- I’m turning 30 this year (in about two weeks, in fact).
- I want to start supporting something. A charity, an organization, a cause… I want to do some right for the world (if that makes sense…). We’re blessed and I want to give back a little.

One or two months ago, I thought a small birthday-fundraiser would start me off well. The way these works, is requesting that people give donations instead of gifts/stuff. Charity:Water has a great goal and looks like it’s doing great things, so I would have gone with them. Their website is setup nicely, too.

A couple of things changed my plans:

First, cynics (that I love and trust…!) brought to my attention that not all charities are well managed. That’s likely. I browsed for reviews/ratings on Charity:Water and didn’t find anything worthwhile, so I’m now looking at various charities, trying to find well-rated charities/organizations that support good causes.

I like environment/sustainable world organizations, but I’m having trouble figuring out tangible actions they are taking (I registered on WWF.ca, but I still don’t know what they are doing, exactly, except marketing and attending summits). I also looked into sponsoring a child; it feels like something I would like to do. I’m not a religious person, so Christian sponsoring (such as World Vision and Compassion) is not a good fit for me, but I found “Plan“, which offers child sponsoring — I didn’t find many reviews of them, but what I saw was good enough. “Water for People“, which has objectives similar to Charity:Water, seems like a good one, too.

If you have opinions and sources on good charities/organizations — and validating websites (ex. charitynavigator.org) — I would love to read them. Thank you.

Now, for the other thing: I’m turning 30 in two weeks, I want to make it special (ie. drown out nostalgia and general grumpiness about piling on a new decade). I’m not really a party animal, although I like to hang out with friends; I enjoy explorations and visits/activities. Ideas?

New decade/year. New design for the blog. New resolutions.

• Reduce (overconsumption?) by about 35%.
  Partly because I’m trying to be more environmentally conscious. Partly because, although I knew the cheap stuff I bought probably meant someone was being under-paid to make it, it didn’t resonate loud enough until I heard Annie Leonard, in The Story of Stuff, say “I’m not paying for the things I buy”. I’m a proud person. I don’t want other people to pay for my things (by being exploited).
  I’m not going for Voluntary Simplicity this year, but I’ll try to develop better buying habits.
• Continue to give blood.
• Go to a festival. Hot-air balloons, western, whatever.
• Become better-informed about environmental issues.
• Eat less meat. (Meat pollutes. Heck, meat kills animals.)
• Start to give small chores to the kids, for them to help out around the house.
  So far, I’ve asked them to put away the cereal boxes after breakfast, sort the silverware from the dishwasher, and take out the place mats for dinner. Any other ideas?
• Find a physical activity that is useful (ie. motivating…).

PS. About the new design: it’s going to look super if you’re using Google Chrome (CSS3, yay!), good if you are using Firefox, and ok if you are using standards-carefree Internet Explorer. (Seriously people: IE is dragging its feet in adopting the standards, do yourself a favor and upgrade to an alternate. You will find the web looks better than you thought.)

I love it when life makes my life easier.

If you recall my super list of resolutions for 2009 — I’m sure it’s engraved in your memory, right? Right…? — there were two items toward the end that read: “Take a class or two” and “Donate blood”.

Well tonight, when I walked out of my gypsy-tango dance class, I was standing 3 steps from a blood drive! It was 8:30pm. With the kids in bed, Frank wouldn’t be needing me right away… I reasoned this was the best opportunity I would get to make good on my promise before the end of the year.

The whole experience was really good, too. I was their last client for the night, and the workers were all chatty and charming. They gave me a blood drop pin with a shiny “1″ on it and told me I can give again in January. I’m psyched!

And hey, apart from the water-saving one (I know! I’m sorry, Environment… I just need to get warm in the morning), I’m doing good enough on all my other resolutions for 2009. Yay!