What do you do to help other people?

[petra]

How are you staying connected with people in this new reality? What good things are you able to do for them? These are questions that often bother me when I'm unable to work, whether the reason is internal or external. I know my worth is not determined by my acts, but sometimes I have trouble believing it. On those days, I think through what I'm able to do even in reduced straits. How about you?

Comments

[desireearmfeldt]

For helping others, I'm mostly flailing at the moment -- too much information, world is too large, everything's to overwhelming.

I've taken a couple of obvious baby steps: my parents and I agreed to check in by phone every few days (they're me-local and generally in very good shape, so they don't actively need help at the moment), I pinged my other local relatives of their generation and a shut-in friend to check in and explicitly tell them to think of me as a resource they can call on, spouse & I gave some money to some obvious charities (food banks, Dr w/o Borders, Unicef).

I'm doing some things to socialize, but honestly, right now Facebook is full of everyone in my extended circles trying to organize large-group/free-for-all online social events and it is stressing me the frak out with a combination of FOMO, not actually being fond of large-group free-for-alls, and the fact that working from home has changed basically nothing about my job so I don't actually have all that much more free time than I did, but my attention span is shattered.

I'm trying to combat that by reaching out to friends for one-on-one socializing; hopefully I can do more of that as time goes on.

[petra]

These are all good things, and I agree that if you keep your goals manageable you'll have better payoff from them.