Andrew Returns with Word of Other Givers!

After nearly a month-and-a-half absence, I'm back to the blog. I wish that I could say the absence was entirely due to my immense giving efforts, or because I was hard at work on the book, but the fact is that I have mostly been distracted by the day job and the coming of spring.

And, to be honest, after 40 days of giving away my entire income, I was slightly burned out, so needed a break from blogging about the subject, for at least a little while. Through this sabbatical, I have had some time to work on the book. From now on, I will continue to use the blog to detail great giving opportunities, as well as to present my thoughts on giving.

My colleague in giving, Brigid Slipka, has been more diligent about continuing to chronicle her giving thoughts and activities on her Actually Giving blog. If you haven't checked it out, it's truly a great, thoughtful read, and well worth the time. Brigid isn't the only giver out there, of course, or even the only giving blogger, and I figure that my return to the blog is as good a time as any to cover some of the other major voices out there talking about this subject!

A Year of Giving
A Washington, DC, gentleman named Reed is doing a Year of Giving project, which involves giving $10 a day for the entire year. Amazingly, he started this project when he got laid off, which shows far more commitment than even my full-income-for-40-days giving plan! If I didn't have an income, I have to admit that I'd find it really hard to give. Kudos to Reed!

Reed is clearly also a more social than yours truly, who tends to be fairly introverted and hesitant to approach people he doesn't know. Reed gives the $10 to individuals by walking up to them and having a prolonged conversation. On his Year of Giving blog, Reed chronicles the stories of these recipients, including a page of people that he's encountered who need some help beyond what he's in a position to offer. With his year-long timeline, he's even caught the attention of CNN.

One of Reed's goal appears to be to establish June 15 as a Worldwide Day of Giving, where as many people as possible give $10 (or more, if able) to a complete stranger. I wholeheartedly endorse this project, and hope that the readers on this blog will join with Reed, myself, and others across the country and world in this endeavor!

Giving One Day's Wages
Eugene Cho believes in giving, so he started an organization called One Day's Wages, which tries to motivate people to give their wages from a single day toward solving problems of severe poverty in the world. The organization was founded by Eugene and his wife, Minhee, who clearly believe in their mission - they donated 100% of their 2009 income (a total of $68,000!) to the cause of fighting extreme global poverty. They continue to give to the organization, trying to reach a personal goal of giving $100,000. This is a major "put your money where your mouth is" step, and lends them a great deal of credibility when they ask others to give just one day's wages.

How much is one day's wages? It turns out to be just about 0.4% of your income. This is certainly an amount which could be given away without a severe hardship on most people, so is something worth considering. And, of course, if you have a more specific charity that you'd like to support than Eugene's, then you can take this philosophy of giving and use it toward the charity of your choice. My guess is that once you start giving, though, you'll find that one day's wages aren't nearly enough, and you'll begin looking for ways to give more.

29 Gifts
Gifts of money are nice, but of course they aren't the only way you can give. In fact, on an interpersonal level, I'd argue that they aren't even the best way to give. Enter Cami Walker, the author of the wildly successful giving book 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life, who began her giving activities while having trouble dealing with the symptoms of Multiple Sclerosis. The gifts she describes are more spontaneous giving activities, which are not focused on the giving of money. Her first gift was, in fact, a supportive phone call to a fellow MS patient. As she details the story, she had amazing mental and physical benefits from this emphasis on giving, and she's founded a 29-Day Giving Challenge to spread the message that she's learned..

This confirms my research - both the reading that I've been doing, and my personal experience with my own giving project. Giving really does have profound, scientifically-proven implications that it will improve many aspects of your life.

Yes, after 40 days I was slightly burned out ... but it wasn't a bad kind of burned out. I imagine that it is sort of how one feels after running a marathon. You're very happy that you've reached the finish line, you probably want to curl up into a nice bed for a few days, but you're immensely satisfied at the sense of accomplishment. That was me.

Now the fatigue has worn off, and I'm looking for the next marathon, the next way to get the rush that comes from giving to others. I've got some great ideas, and I look forward to sharing them with you.

What are your ideas? What givers have motivated you? What is your giving story?

First 40 Days Media Coverage

Authors thrive on free publicity, which helps get the word out about a book. I am very fortunate to find that I've gotten publicity well before the book was ever released, which is a nice little feather in my cap, and a testament to the power of this project. Check out the story at Anderson's local newspaper, The Herald Bulletin. The picture is, I think, a bit unflattering, but the one in the newspaper version of the story, which was taken as we were giving out gift cards, is much better.

Let me know what you think of the interview!

Day 5: Want a Free Book?

As I mentioned yesterday, I truly love to read. The unfortunate side effect of this is that since I read a lot, I buy a lot of books. In fact, I buy so many books that it far outstrips my time available for reading. This isn't inherently a problem, because I believe that everyone's library should contain books that they haven't gotten to yet, because it means they always have something to look forward to. (I read that somewhere, though I can't remember where at the moment.) If you only buy books as you have a chance to read them, then you're not really committed to the learning process.

And, for me, keeping books around that I've already read isn't just hording. As a writer, I frequently need to reference some idea from a book I read long ago, so keeping them handy is something of a necessity.

For example, just a couple of months ago, I was reading something which referenced an idea from Plato's Phaedo. Wanting to learn more, I went down into the basement and dug out my copy of Phaedo, which I haven't read since I was taking a classical philosophy course in college over a dozen years ago. I was quickly able to find Phaedo and get the information I needed, since I rarely get rid of books.

(My books are organized thematically and by subject, so I could easily find the classical greek philosophy, a kind of informal version of the Dewey decimal system. This method drives my wife nuts, especially in our DVDs, since she has to figure out if I consider Keeping the Faith to be a religious film, placing it near The Last Temptation of Christ, or a romantic comedy, placing it near Sweet Home Alabama. Such are the trials she must persevere to love a man like me. These days, we watch non-kid films so rarely that I've really given up on organizing the DVD cabinet anyway, as every other trip into it is with the express goal of getting Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins. But I digress.)

In fact, the whole book String Theory for Dummies would have been much more difficult to write if I weren't such a pack rat, because there were books on the subject that I'd read over a decade earlier, which I had to go back through for research. In addition, years worth of science magazines piled around my basement were also scoured for resources. So these things do occasionally prove useful.

Despite this, there are a lot of these books which, while perfectly fine books, I just know I won't need. And what's odd is that, despite my near-certain knowledge that I won't need to ever look in them again, and that even if I had free time I wouldn't ever get back to them, it's actually hard for me to give some away. I think, "No, I can't give away my The Elements of Fiction Writing series," even though I long ago internalized (though have not yet mastered) the key elements of these introductory writing books - which, incidentally, I bought in high school! The only way to get better at them is to write more, not to have books sitting on a shelf which I have not and will never reference after reading them the first time.

So, the question then becomes how best to give the books away. My original thinking was that I'd just load them up in a box to Goodwill, but then I decided that it would make more sense to offer them to the people actually going to the trouble to read the blog. So here is a list of the books I am giving away. If you would like them, then e-mail me (azjauthor@gmail.com) or message me in Facebook with your street address, and I'll send them to you next Friday (when my "giving" fund has money in it). I've broken the book down by category for easy review:

Writing Books:

• Scene and Structure by Jack M. Bickham
• Beginnings, Middles, and Ends by Nancy Kress
• Characters and Viewpoints by Orson Scott Card
• Plot by Ansen Dibell
• Conflict, Action, and Suspense by William Noble
• Setting by Jack M. Bickham

Science Fiction/Fantasy Books:

• Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov
• Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain by Isaac Asimov
• The Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg
• Nemesis by Isaac Asimov
• Nightfall by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg
• Isaac Asimov's Robots in Time: Marauder by William F. Wu
• Isaac Asimov's Robots in Time: Predator by William F. Wu
• Gamer Fantastic edited by Kerrie Hughes (collection of short stories about gaming)
• Intelligent Design edited by Denise Little (collection of stories on evolution versus creationism)
• Cold at Heart by Brian A. Hopkins
• Deadfellas by David Whitman
• The Scar by China Mieville
• The Lady of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• The Forest House by Marion Zimmer Bradley
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
• Sailing to Sarantium (Sarantine Mosaic Book 1) by Guy Gavriel Kay (hardcover, first U.S. edition, autographed)
• Lord of Emperors (Sarantine Mosaic Book 2) by Guy Gavriel Kay (hardcover, first U.S. edition, autographed)
• Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey (hardcover, first edition, autographed)

Science:

• The Void by Frank Close
• 13 Things That Don't Make Sense by Michael Brooks

Other:

• John Adams by David McCullough
• The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution: Chlorinating the Gene Pool edited by Wendy Northcutt
• The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans
• The 5 Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth by Richard Paul Evans

Since I will have to ship these books, please don't get carried away. Only request the books if you really have a desire to read them, or to pass them on to someone else (as gifts - no reselling!) who would enjoy them. Any unclaimed books will be given to either Goodwill, the local library, or possibly our local prison, depending on which one seems to have the greatest need.

Books That Inspired the Project

Of course, in addition to the books that I'll be reading over the coming 40 days (discussed yesterday), there are a number of books that helped inspire and cultivate this project idea in its infancy. They basically fall in two categories.

Project Books

The first category includes what I have taken to calling "project books," which are autobiographical accounts of people who set themselves some specific goal and then go about trying to make it happen. Accounts like the ones below helped me get in a mindset for a project like this in the first place, even before I had an actual idea for what my particular project would be.

• The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World by A.J. Jacobs: Jacobs reads every word of the Encyclopedia Britannica, from A to Z, and writes about the amazing experience.
• The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible by A.J. Jacobs: In this book, Jacobs attempts to follow the Old Testament laws as closely as possible, even going so far as to drop stones on peoples' shoes in order to "stone" them. Jacobs is a fantastic author, and his account is highly engaging. This is the inspiration (along with the Bible itself, of course) for Ed Dobson's The Year of Living Like Jesus. Jacobs, in fact, wrote the forward to Dobson's book.
• The Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible by David Plotz: Plotz reads the Old Testament from beginning to end, commenting as he goes on what occurs to him. I have attempted to do a similar project, though more piecemeal, over at my Philosopher's Stone blog. I'm still in Leviticus, but I think that's mostly because I haven't set definite goals on this one.
• No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process by Colin Beavan:  Beavan attempts to generate no net environmental impact, and the story is truly astounding. It really made me think about the overall impact of even seemingly small decisions, such as choosing to use disposable diapers or getting take-out food.

Philanthropy Books

In addition, I've also read a number of books that have stressed the importance of philanthropy, which have of course also set the seeds of this project in my mind:

• Me to We: Finding Meaning in a Material World by Craig Kielburger & Marc Kielburger: This was a great book, really exploring the stories of two brothers who devote themselves to charitable work, and in fact a whole movement of the upcoming generation who is choosing to turn its back on the materialism that is at the heart of so much of modern American life.
• The 5 Lessons a Millionaire Taught Me About Life and Wealth by Richard Paul Evans: I read this book right as I was getting ready to marry Amber and begin my life as a family man, and it had a profound effect on my views about money and success. The fifth lesson is "Give Back." In fact, many books on finance and success emphasize the importance of this. In addition to Amber's influence, it was this book that made me decide to begin giving a portion of my salary to charity, even when I felt I didn't have the excess to spare.
• The Blessed Life: The Simple Secret of Achieving Guaranteed Financial Results by Robert Morris: This is a Christian-based book, which I bought from our church after watching a compelling video series based on it during the Christmas season of 2009. While I certainly think the "Guaranteed" in the title is a bit disingenuous (especially since the author says repeatedly that financial rewards are not guaranteed, even while implying strongly that they are guaranteed - you can't have it both ways, Reverend Morris!), I was intrigued at the strong argument he makes for how important giving, and specifically tithing, is. It's laced throughout the Bible, in places that I would never have expected. I'll discuss some of the thoughts on "tithing" that came out of this book later on.

My Charitable Reading List

While giving is great, my life-long love has always been reading, and I certainly won't give up reading during my 40 Days of Giving experiment ... but I will focus my reading on books that emphasize the importance of giving, or which seem thematically associated to the project. Here's the pile of books, mostly from my local library, that I have sitting before me:

• How to Be An Everyday Philanthropist by Nicole Bouchard Boles
• Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier by Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D.
• The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis by Jeremy Rifkin (Here's a link to an interesting radio interview with Jeremy Rifkin ... which is good, because this book is a monstrous tome at 616 pages plus many pages of endnotes, so I may not actually fit it into the 40 days.)
• The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society by Frans de Waal
• The Power of Serving Others by Gary Morsch & Dean Nelson
• The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness edited by Dacher Keltner, Jason Marsh, and Jeremy Adam Smith.
• Give It Up!: My Year of Learning to Live Better with Less by Mary Carlomagno (It's not about giving, but a useful book in exploring how to organize your life so that you are able to give)
• 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life by Cami Walker (This one, since it's sort of similar to what I'm doing, will be put off until the end of the project, since I don't want to be influenced by it too much.)
• The Year of Living Like Jesus: My Journey of Discovering What Jesus Would Really Do by Rev. Ed Dobson (This is a sort of "sequel" to The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs, which focused primarily on the Old Testament. Though written by a different author, it was inspired by the earlier book, and the Jacobs writes the forward. I don't know if I'll get to this one, or if I'll put it off until after the experiment is over.)

I've also snagged the following audiobooks from my local library, for when I'm in the car:

• The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
• Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World by Bill Clinton
• The Generosity Factor: Discover the Joy of Giving Your Time, Talent, and Treasures by Kenneth Blanchard & S. Truett Cathy

This list of books should definitely get me in the giving mindset. I might need to occasionally run to the local coin shop and stare at some shiny gold coins just to avoid a full vow of poverty after taking all of this stuff into my brain.