Dave Barry’s Year in Review


Nobody does the year end review like Dave Barry.

…On a more hopeful note, on March 27 people in more than 4,000 cities around the world turn off their lights in observance of Earth Hour, saving an estimated 45 million megawatts of electricity — enough to power one of Al Gore’s houses for nearly three days.

Dave Barry | MiamiHerald.com

The Best Thing I Did in 2010?

So, I signed for The Daily Post at WordPress.com.  It’s a writing prompt to encouage me to blog/post every day.  So today’s prompt was:

What’s the single most important thing you accomplished in 2010?

My first thought was that I really need to get my act together in 2011 so that I can actually write this post next year.  After all, I didn’t lose the weight I wanted to, I didn’t get out of debt (but I’m closer), and I didn’t get published.

Still, I did manage to complete a 50,000 word novel for Nanowrimo. I helped launch the magazine at Bearing Drift. I took a week off and helped lead Vacation Bible School at WEAG. I gave the last two months of the year to WEAG’s Glorious Christmas Nights.  And those were some good things.  Were they the most significant?  I don’t know.

One of the most memorable for me, however, was my missions trip to New Orleans.  It was my second trip there since the devastation of Katrina.  This time we built a fence for a church and helped do renovations as they seek to open a community day care.  It was a great week of hard work and accomplishment.  My “single greatest?”  Maybe, maybe not.  But it was a good thing to do.

Somewhere around the time we turned 40 my wife and I began to joke that we needed to do something significant, because after all, we’re too old to die young.  But maybe it’s not that we need to do something earth shattering.  Maybe it’s that we just need to do what John Wesley said: 

“Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.”

Seems like that’s pretty significant.