A Productive Morning

I always pretend that I'm going to sleep in on the weekends. I'll kid myself by setting my alarm clock for 9:30 or 10:00AM. Then I'll wake up at 7:30 (my usual wakeup time) anyway.

This Sunday followed the same routine. Saturday night I set my alarm for 10:00AM, but then I'm up at 7:30 Sunday morning. However, this Sunday was a little different in that I awoke with a bundle of energy.

Wanting to capitalize on this unusual early morning energy, I rolled out of bed immediately, got dressed and went for a walk down the river-walk. As I strolled through one of the parks lining the river-walk trail, I noticed two things. First, I saw some yellow spray paint graffiti and secondly I noticed a trash bin overflowing with plastic water bottles. The day before, there had been a walk for some disease/cure fundraiser, so that's where all the bottles came from and there is occasionally graffiti at various parts of the park.

This is where I got pretty productive.

I take pride in my local park and want to help keep it a nice place. So, I walked home and grabbed a can of black spray paint, and a garbage bag. I walked back to the park and stuffed as many plastic bottles from the park garbage bin into my garbage bag as I could fit and tied the bag off. Then, I walked over to the graffiti (gang tags and not cool artistic graffiti) and then I spray painted over it, covering it in a layer of black paint that matched the black post on which the tag was located.

I walked back home, and then dropped the bag of bottles off at my local recycling location. I got home from that short trip and realized it was still before 9:00AM. It would be another hour before my alarm clock sounded.

Something I've noticed is that occasionally people will excuse their lack of apathy by seeing apathy in others and saying, "Well, it's not like anyone else is doing xyz, so why should I?" However, this is just an excuse for laziness. There are always people out there working toward bettering themselves and their societies. We just don’t always see it. However, even if there weren't, there’re no reasons why we can’t try to be an example for others.

What do you do that you don't get credit for? How do you work to improve yourself or your community? Now is your time to brag! Leave a comment.

-D