Friday Five

For the first time here, five questions from the real Friday five

When was the last time I have...

1. ...sent a handwritten letter?
My got one little one about a week ago. It was almost a real letter. It was written on the inside of a ’s day card. It included the translation of the English text on the front of the card and some additional fun facts. The last letter that was solely written as a letter, was to a long time friend in Germany. It was written on airmail paper and used a Japanese envelope designed to send money. I am really bad with letters of any kind though. There are at this point (let me check) 2398 emails in my in-box that I have failed to reply to. There are 20586 emails in total, so it is a bit more than 10% that just go unanswered. And no, it is not spam that I am collecting here. It is about 1GB of real email in total.

2. ...baked something from scratch or made something by hand?
I try to draw every day. I guess that does not count. Last baking adventure I remember was probably about 10 years ago. I used one of those Dr. Oetker mixes.

3. ...camped in a tent?
Oh boy, maybe 20 years ago? I think we had this tent in Poland and we camped out in Koszarawa Cicha, a tiny village where we also had a cabin-house.
I might be off by several years here.
I just never had a tent. I used my car instead (I only owned old, roomy Mercedes-Benz cars. One model, 5 cars.). I do not have a car here in New York, so my last camp out was probably some time in 1995, I think in Paris.

4. ...volunteered your time to church, school, or community?
Another embarassing one. I am a mentor with the AIGA and the New York board of Education, and we had a picnic on Saturday. I am not sure if this counts as volunteering. I enjoy this so much, it is more of a time well spent experience. I see how I might have to volunteer more.

5. ...helped a stranger?
This is New York. No day passes without strangers helping strangers. I feel bad writing about any of these activities. If I write about them then they somehow do not seem to count anymore. Not sure if this is part of my Polish Catholic upbringing maybe? I somehow feel that I should do good things and NOT talk or write about them. It feels better to help someone and just to walk away than to talk about it again and again and then write about it in the blog and so on. I wanted to get breakfast for this homeless lady this morning, but I think she was embarrassed or not hungry, or something. I got her a pizza the day before yesterday. She was having a beer and I did not want her to have that on an empty stomach.
Actually. I feel much worse for not having helped the woman I saw sleeping on the sidewalk yesterday. I really just walked by. She must have been cold. I feel so bad. I know this will sound strange, but I have a much better memory for the moments when I have not helped strangers than for those when I have. I do not feel good about this. The only way to change it, might be to help more, do more. Starting now.