Good Stuff

  My life is filled with daily frustrations. There is traffic, bills, that one rude crossing guard that always signals to me to slow down when I’m not even speeding. Also, the fact that there is always something leaking in our house and there is always at least one of my tires that has a hole in it. Not to mention, Maizy is my child. I have thirteen year old twins that for the love of God CANNOT figure out how to do laundry or load a dishwasher. I spend seven and half hours a day five days a week in a closet, literally, trying to figure out how to fix things I broke (work). And on the weekends I spend twelve hours a day washing clothes that I could swear were still clean and fishing long brown hair out of my shower drain. I’m not rich. I’m not famous. I’m not even good at math, but it’s my life.

  Lately, I have been feeling like there is more bad to life than good. I hate that feeling. I felt like it was my own fault though. Maybe I’m not putting enough good out there in the world. So I decided to try something small. I started a club at work. In case you didn’t already know, I work at a preschool for Garland ISD and our mascot is the panda bear. If you know me, you know I love a good pun or acronym, so I named my club the P.A.W Club. It stands for Positive Actions at Work. I gave a flyer to my co-workers asking them to sign up. Only expecting my usual crew of buddies, I was surprised to find that from a staff of 50, I had 24 people who wanted to join. I had a meeting and basically said “hi, I have no idea what I’m doing but I want to start a volunteer club to help people in need and I want you all to help me with it.”

  Within two weeks, our club had multiple events planned for various volunteer organizations, we had a plan, we had a goal, and we even had t shirts! Yeah I know, I work with the most amazing people! Our first event was this past weekend. We gathered donated items and decorated a local women’s shelter for the holidays. It’s not something that will end world hunger or stop global warming but it was something good. However, I left the shelter feeling incomplete. I couldn’t sleep. I had an overwhelming feeling that I needed to do more. So I will.

  I have felt a difference in myself already. Tonight as I was driving across town to pick up Avery from school at 5:30, it was getting dark and instead of my usual “Ugh, I hate driving all the way over here so late when I know I have to make dinner too,” I just couldn’t stop looking at the sky and thinking about how it looked just like the color of cotton candy. And after dinner when everyone ran as fast as they could out of the kitchen so they didn’t have to help clean up, I didn’t even scream. I cleaned up and even made brownies. The point of this story is, doing good makes you feel good, and it’s necessary. There are people out there who are struggling worse than us. There are people who wish for flat tires and ungrateful children. What we think is a bad life is probably just a bad day and that is ok. There will be bad days. But you have to move on and move up. We can do better and I want to. We all should.

PAW Club💜💜