Birthday Present

Barbara and Deb: Deb and I have been sooooo busy lately that we haven’t had even a minute for official blog-business talk amongst ourselves. The craziness of our lives lately has reflected in many ways: we’ve missed reading your blogs (sorry! we’ll be back), we’ve let a few things slide around our “house” here, and we never got around to talking about the next steps we want to take. Life is like that, huh?

Well, yesterday we finally had a chance to take stock and ask some questions about where we want to go next and how we want to do it.

So, first things first.

As you may have noticed, there are ads on our blog. If I remember correctly, we decided to include the ads because Blogher is the host and they’re such a big network and we thought it might a) help broaden our readership and b) maybe generate a bit of income toward some of the work a blog requires. But, as most “practical” decisions in our lives, that went out the window when we realized there was a little bit of cash in the kitty and that we might need to decide what to do with that cash: divvy it up, let it ride, go out for lunch, etc, etc…

It took us all of ten seconds of discussion to realize we could donate the money! Now, of course, Deb and I donate to many worthy causes in our respective lives, and proudly so, but we didn’t just want to make a random decision when it came to donating the Blogher ads revenue. This was a trickier conversation—we didn’t want to begin a complex discussion every year as to which charity would best deserve it because, of course, all of them deserve it (even if it is a modest amount, it’s the principle, right?).

Then Deb made what I think is a genius and lovely suggestion: what if we looked back over the year that we’ve had in our blogiverse and make our decision based on the wondrous and magical (and, frankly, miraculous) and unexpected direction that this blog has taken us and then give back to that particular world? And if we look back over our last year in terms of “organic” development, then it’s obvious that, without the blog, we would never have gone to Costa Rica (thanks again, Gift of Happiness!) and without the Gift of Happiness, we would never have discovered Pack for a Purpose, the charity that encourages travellers to bring gifts to the country they’re visiting.

And I made another lovely suggestion (if I do say so myself): what if we made our yearly donation in the week of our shared birthdays—which, as many of you know—is the end of this week?

In the years to come, we would like to go where the blog organically leads us and make donations based on that our experiences.

So there you have it: Pack for a Purpose has received a small donation from us this year—and we give that amount in honour of all of YOU. It can be a birthday present from all of us to all of us.