I can't remember if I ever mentioned this, but if not for Cat Schwartz I would never have gone to volunteer at the Red Cross shelter during Katrina. Cat, I wanted to thank you for your Blog post on Katrina and your experience in Houston.
The evening of Sep 24th, I had been thinking about going to volunteer - I had heard the call on the radio, I didn't have anything pressing over the weekend and the family was out of town. But, I finally talked myself out of it. Given time, one can find an excuse to do or not do just about anything after all. So, I stayed up goofing around on the computer until 3:25am and then I went to bed, having thoroughly convinced myself that there wasn't anything of use that I could contribute to anyone. The next morning, I woke up about 10am and went to the computer for my morning blogs. Just by chance, I read Cat's post from September 19. At that point, I couldn't stop myself. I showered, made a quick post, and then ran out the door before I could come up with a reason not to. I rarely just take action like that, but I knew that I couldn't let myself think too much or I'd talk myself out of it. I'm not one for getting outside my comfort zone, or even near the edge of it, very often. Some times I'm sorry about that fact.
Anyway, If you start reading with this post from Saturday, September 24, 2005 and go up post by post, you can follow my story. It turns out that I did have something to contribute. I learned a lot about a lot over those few days. I like to think that I helped a few people. Those people definitely helped me, even thought they didn't know it.
Without the encouragement of Cat, I wouldn't have had one of the best experiences of my life. So again, Cat, thank you, thank you, thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment