I’m a little in shock. I can’t believe our time together is ending tomorrow. The year has gone by so quickly. I’ll write in much greater detail what my little experiment has meant to me tomorrow, but before then I have some exciting news.
Some of you have asked me to continue to blog and I really thought about keeping it going myself, but the truth is, as much as I’m going to miss it—and I will miss writing the blog and the ongoing conversation I have had with so many of you this year in ways that make me almost inconsolably bereft—I need to take a break.
Writing the blog has been like wearing velvet handcuffs. I have loved it so, so much, but there has not been a day where I could take a break-whether I was in Poland or Mexico or my computer broke and I had to find a replacement or on vacation or even when my father died. Even if I used a guest blog —and thank goodness for those —I still had to log on and edit and post the blog. Jan. 1, 2014 will be the first day in 365 that I have not had to be on the computer or had to find time to post no matter where I was in the world.
Having said all that, I really feel like we have started something special and I say “we” because although I came up with the idea and wrote the blog, it became very clear to me very early on that the blog was a dialog between me and the people who were reading it and commenting on the blog and on Facebook and in person with me.
I want to keep this going and the perfect solution presented itself.
A few months ago, Brian Mansfield, whom many of you may know from his great work as a journalist at USA Today, asked me what would happen when the year was up. I said I didn’t know. He suggested, if I was amenable, that someone take over the blog and keep the name going. And then he said he’d be interested in being that person.
I took a few months to think about it and to make sure I didn’t want to keep going and I’ve decided to turn Causes & Effect: My Year of Giving Daily over to Brian for 2014. I’m going to concentrate on working on a book deal about the blog— if anyone has any ideas, suggestions, or connections about that, please email me— and some magazine articles about what the experience has meant to me, and thinking about where I want to go next with Causes & Effect.
This current website will stay up, in case anyone wants to catch up or revisit my year’s worth of blogs. Plus, I’ve registered the website, www.causesandeffect.net (you would have thought I would have done that Jan. 1, 2013 instead of Dec. 30, 2014) and I’m going to migrate the daily blogs over there as soon as I figure out how to do that.
As Brian and I have discussed how to go forward, I’ve only felt better and better about the decision. He will be a good steward of Causes & Effect for the next 365 days. I’m excited for him too because I know how much Causes & Effect has changed my life for the better and I know it’s going to do the same for him.
If you’d like to follow him, here’s the link to his blog for when it launches Jan. 1, 2014. http://myyearofgivingdaily.tumblr.com/ I know I will be.
The Facebook Causes and Effect page remains up and active (again... probably should have started that on Day 1 instead of Day 335... marketing was not my strong suit this year) and I will continue to post any updates there during 2014. Maybe Brian and I will even start a Twitter page for Causes & Effect.
For one last time (for now), I will see you here again tomorrow.
(While it’s really warm here in LA, it’s obviously not in much of the rest of the country. Tonight, I’m giving to a homeless shelter in Minneapolis, which I’m sure is overfilled tonight with people seeking refuge from the cold).
Dec. 30: People Serving People
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