Tag: to write love on her arms

#oneaday, Day 345: Leader of Men

I’ve never seen myself as the “leader” type. I follow orders well, but when I’m asked to take charge of something, I find myself thinking whether or not I’m “qualified” to make those decisions, particularly if they’re on behalf of other people. Now, I’m a qualified teacher, so in the most literal sense of the term I am qualified to make decisions on behalf of other people. But if you’re the sort of person who suffers a bit from self-doubt or a lack of self-confidence, then it’s difficult to make yourself get into a position to “lead” others.

Which is why I’ve kind of surprised myself with stepping up to the plate for next year’s One A Day Project. And also why I’m even more surprised that people—some of whom I don’t even know directly (yet)—appear to be flocking to the cause. Apparently either my word carries some degree of influence, or people think it’s actually a good idea.

I think it’s a good idea. Yes, some may argue that the more relaxed rules of next year aren’t strictly “one a day” in the most literal sense. And to that I say, “I agree”. But it’s a compromise. Those who do want to go the whole hog and commit to a post every day, I applaud you. (And yes, I am applauding myself right now.) Those who don’t feel they can commit to a post every single day, that’s absolutely fine too. Personally, while I am a fan of writing something every day and believe that both I and this blog have got something out of it, it’s not for everyone, depending on work, family commitments and all manner of other things. So it makes sense to relax the rules a bit in order to allow as many people as possible to participate.

And that, I guess, is what heading up some sort of project is all about—listening to a variety of viewpoints, weighing up the pros and cons and coming to some sort of compromise that makes as many people as possible happy.

I’m really pleased with the amount of interest people have shown in the new project so far, and I promise I won’t keep banging on about it over here too much. But I thought I’d just share the fact that we’re up to 24 participants (with a few more sign-ups in my inbox that I’ll be putting on the site once I’ve flown back from the US to the UK… boo) and we have had our first monetary donation to Cancer Research. We’ve also earned 153 minutes of crisis and suicide prevention services on behalf of To Write Love On Her Arms via ad clickthroughs.

It may not sound like a lot until you consider the fact that we haven’t started yet. (Those of us who are starting on January 1st, that is.) Hopefully once everyone starts contributing, there’ll be a wealth of content for people to enjoy, and said people will be happy to contribute their time or their money to the charities we’re supporting to show their appreciation.

So yes; I know that “#oneaday” doesn’t mean one a day next year. But that’s fine; it’s going to bring a bunch of people together to do something awesome. And it feels pretty good to be an important part of that.

#oneaday, Day 339: Looking Forward

Okay. I’m going to go ahead and make this pledge now, since I’ve been farting around with it for the whole day and don’t want all that work to go to waste.

I will be continuing with daily blogging next year, whether you (yes, YOU) like it or not.

However, a couple of people pointed out that it’s worth putting some kind of “incentive” in place for those who want to take part. I’m not talking about monetary gain for the participants (though if you want to fling a few quid and/or Steam/GOG games my way in appreciation for my hard work, I certainly wouldn’t say no) — rather, as the fine, gorgeous and well-endowed Mr Daniel Lipscombe suggested, we should get sponsored. For charity, like.

With that in mind, I’ve set up a few things today. The first is this. I envisage this page being a central hub for our collective, where we can post all of our entries together and end up with a delicious archive of everything we’ve done together. This can also double as a jumping-off point for people to visit our individual sites, and contains the all-important donation buttons. I took an executive decision and signed up to benefit Cancer Research UK via JustGiving, and To Write Love On Her Arms via SocialVibe. Most people out there know someone or have been personally affected by cancer, so that seemed like a safe option. To Write Love On Her Arms is an organisation which helps those with depression, anxiety, crises and suicidal thoughts. Being someone who has suffered considerably with depression for many years now, this particular group held some personal resonance for me, and it’s one of the more popular options to support via SocialVibe.

Here’s what I need anyone reading this to do, and it’s very simple:

Tell people. Get them to follow us on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Read the updates on the blog. And, for those who are interested in joining the party, signing up on this page.

Once things are up and running, I can co-ordinate everyone’s work (and by that, I mean post their entries onto the Project’s main page, not hassle people if they don’t have time to write something) and we can all work on promoting blogging for a good cause.

Sound good? It sounds good to me, and as a co-operative effort I think it will work well. The fact that we’re being sponsored for charity will give some people the push to carry on, and despite the name, I figured we can relax the rules on posting frequency a little bit.

By the end of another year, we’ll have a huge body of work to look back on with pride and hopefully will have raised at least a little money for a couple of charities that are worth supporting. Plus it’s certainly a more proactive approach than simply changing your bloody Facebook avatar.