Charity

Let's talk about charity for a moment. Charity hasn't been an important part or even consideration in my life up until a few years ago. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't anti-charity or anything like that, I just didn't make an effort to be especially charitable, at least in the traditional donate to a cause sense. I've always tried to help my friends out when they need it, without concern for payback, which I suppose is charitable as well.

That changed like I said a few years ago. I was living alone in New Hampshire and my life was pretty empty. Go to work, come home, watch TV or play video games, go to sleep. Wash, rinse, repeat. I watched a web series about the creators of web comic called Penny Arcade. It's a very popular comic, and even spawned it's own convention called Penny Arcade Expo or PAX. Well, the creators of this comic started a charity called Child's Play, which donates money to children's hospitals to provide toys and games that help children going through awful experiences like chemo to help them focus on something other than the pain and misery they're going through. This spoke to me on a level I can't even begin to communicate.

I don't have children of my own, but I can't imagine having to go through that. I wanted to take part in this process, and I was watching Wil Wheaton's Tabletop series at the time, so I decided I'd like to hold a 24 hour board game marathon and raise money for Child's Play. It was a ton of work to put it together, but it was successful. The first year we raised over $1700. In the process, I made a ton of new friends and also some contacts at our local children's hospital, The Barbara Bush Children's Hospital.

This year, I wanted to do it again. While I had great success working with Child's Play, there's another charity that is much more accessible (Child's Play is based in Seattle), called Extra Life, who performs essentially the same function. I had a number of supporters and with their help, we held another event this past April and this time, it was an even bigger success, raising over $5,600. Additionally, I found out later that the contact I had helped facilitate between Child's Play and BBCH the year before resulted in them being added to the donor hospital list. They received an $11,500 pay out from Child's Play and will continue to receive donations going forward.

The feelings I get being able to help contribute to this worthy cause makes the day to day slog through work and life so much easier to bear. I hope to turn this long walk into something that will contribute further. After all, it's for the kids.