|| Personal Shopper at Salvation Army

Is this the last post of 2009 and of a passing decade? Have to leave it a few days before I can say so, but first of all, I had the opportunity to do the Salvation Army volunteer day yesterday on the 23rd. There is a new site this year, 30min drive from Innsbrooke thru 288 at the Chesterfield town center. Most of the time I was walking around the mall being a personal shopper for the needed people.

The shopping routine was coat, toy, shoes, clothing, family and finally holiday stuff. The rule by the captain was pretty much 2 pieces per kid. So I was excited to see my first customer, and her name is Melissa with three girl kids. Pretty soon I realized that my explanations on the rules had no effect whatsoever on Melissa, and she just grabbed everything if she deemed fit for any of the girls. A full cart of things ended up going out for checkout, and as I was struggling strapping up the bag for everything she picked up, she took it over from my two hands, and pulled the bag on her shoulder and off she went out of the door with a Merry Christmas behind her. Later I saw that most of the people are like her, no rules no boundaries, they got whatever they needed, extras, extras and more extras. This shouldn't be new discovery, that there are no poor people in the US, they are taken care of if they'd like to be. I'm sure that they are richer than I am who is not exactly poor. The kids have toys for one year's Christmas than those for my entire life. All I can do is to remind them that they should pick up some books for the girls, and they always agreed.

I wrote 33 e-greetings this year (yesterday afternoon), bigger than the last. However, there was hardly any excitement, actually I was much better off reading people's replies, full of accomplishments, made me feel blue? Meditation, that's what I'm doing now.

I read books this year, went to new places, ate better, and experienced the not so ultimate highs and the not so ultimate lows. It's not a year that has the significance, merely following the threads from other years before. If using one word to summarize, it would've been flat, and by the way, I hate being flat. What do I think of the decade, it's fast, but it's slow. The holidays from ten years ago were long time ago, and was so dark and painful, I could still feel the chill, which set the tone for this passing decade. But for sure I had forgotten it already, yet I made other mistakes, lethal in one way or another, those which I'm living with everyday today, and will probably live up to its consequence for the next decade. I've done all to correct the course, to rejuvenate, but I wish there could be new orientations, but there is none so far.

Moving on, I saw three snow falls this year, all of them memorable. One in March (early spring surprises), June (in the awesome Yellowstone) and December (last weekend). This December snow was the heaviest, so thick and so dense. I couldn't deal with snow at all, but managed to still drive around. Like what the snow brought out of me, I felt I was doing many things to the best of my abilities, but I knew there should be more. I normally do not make a list of these things, but here's a change for the new decade, in no particular order -

#1 money matters (read professional books, make investments, be smart)
#2 life matters (buy buy buy, enjoy life and live happy)
#3 people matter (keep up with everyone in a positive way, be warm)
#4 career matters (what I want to do, do it, be bold and be ready)
#5 health matters (eat more healthy, but how?!, and exercise and exercise, be well)
#6 emotion matters (toughen up, and be strong)

So at least, the beginning of the next decade is so much more peaceful, so I'm moving and moving on .... may new and good things come to me, may all loved ones always be with me~~