Help… | #AtoZ #LetterH #nonfiction

…how can I do it?

Hi! I know you stopped by looking for an A-Z post of a short story, or perhaps the craft of writing. Perhaps you even looked so far as to see that my theme is “Catching Up.” Well, while I did spending a couple of days “catching up”, so at least on that point I’m on theme, there may actually be no fiction or writing talk.

I have two questions and a declaration in the front of my personal journal at the moment.

• How can I help others?
• What am I grateful for?
• The plan is to not have a plan.

As I work through ideas of how I can be creative at the moment and I get stuck, I copy those down and go through them.

I’ll focus on the first.

I am very lucky to still be employed, as is my husband. However, our income was tight before this started, and at this point, it’s likely less than our expenses. I’m shit at keeping a budget, and I know that’s something I should start getting better at now, but with the death of my laptop and just getting things pulled back together a couple days ago, that hasn’t happened yet.

What I’m getting at is that I won’t help with monetary donations to places or people that need it because right now the place and people that needs it most is here.

The main idea I’ve been working on is the YouTube channel I recently started recording videos for.

How is that going to help others?

It’s a really good question, and what I’ve settled on is based on the fact that one of my personal escapes at the moment is to scroll through my YouTube feed and look for new videos to watch. I’m drinking them up like the water I’m supposed to be drinking, and the list of channels I’m subscribed to just isn’t keeping up.

So at a time when I’m desperate for new content, I figure I can’t be the only one.

And I have time, and the basic tools to be able to create content.

And since the plan is to not have a plan, I can pull this off.

It’s perhaps a silly idea, that videos I make will possibly be helping anyone. The odds of anyone seeing the videos beyond family and friends are very low. I’m new at video editing, and recording videos, and so the work is amateur.

I would rather write stories. That seems like a much more solid way to help people. Putting out something a person can escape in is also something I have more experience with, and I feel like I’m better at.

But I haven’t had words for a while, besides these blog posts and personal journal entries. It’s incredibly frustrating, but I’m not going to force them even though I probably should. And when I do force them, I’m going to force myself to finish the sequel to Tripping because this one person I know requires it.

So yeah, it might be a pathetic way to help, but it’s what I have the emotional energy for during this chaos.