How the heck?

I got this wild idea a few months ago and thought I would start on January 1st.. keep it to the calendar year. Turns out I was in Germany on the 1st and traveling all of the 2nd, so I had my first adjustment to make. I then decided February 8th would be a good start... 2/8/08.

As I seriously considered this adventure, my initial thought was that I would volunteer every single day for one hour. The reality is, there is no volunteer opportunity that is just one hour. There is at least a half an hour travel on either end and most opportunities are more than one hour. Rats!

And as I thought a bit more, there are my other commitments... a husband, friends, family, a yard, eating, exercise, doing nothing from time to time, a new job (priorities not in any particular order). How could I possibly volunteer every day and not lose all of my other priorities?

Then came all the travel that I do... how would I squeeze in volunteering on a day when I am flying 7 hours or more to get to family and friends? Travel days would have to be exempt.

I was hoping I could go to Hands On Greater Portland for ease of setting up opportunities. I am a huge fan of the Hands On Network and their ability to make volunteering easy. As I look at the HOGP calendar, they don't have something every day, travel will be a consideration, and I want to volunteer at opportunities I am passionate about (not all of their opportunities are so interesting to me.) Finding opporunities is going to take more work than I thought!

So here are my parameters to start; with inevitable adjustments to be made.
- I will volunteer 7 hours a week, an average of one hour per day. According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, people my age typically volunteer 37 hours a year or a little more 3 hours a month. I will be volunteering 9-10 times as much as the average me. (http://www.cns.gov/pdf/VIA/VIA_summaryreport.pdf)
- I will bring along another person at least once a month.
- I want to have one opportunity that I consistently do to build a relationship with an organization.
- I will make adjustments as I need to.
- I will blog about this year at least three times a week so I have an opportunity to reflect upon the experience regularly.

Here we go!