First let me start with – I feel rather guilty, as I have written so little this year.  Then you hear from me when I have my New York Cares Begging Bowl in hand and am asking for help with my coat drive.

  I want to say that I have not written intentionally.

No, nothing bad has happened. It’s just that the last… I think year really – and certainly the last four months have been so loud. Everywhere someone is yelling in your ear, or out of your computer or your phone. The endless texts asking for donations.

Every time you buy something there is a survey, they want you to take.

The survey is followed by subsequent surveys about how did you feel about taking the last survey. Do you want to take another survey?

Do you like the product you bought? If not why?  Then  another survey and then fifty emails from the company you bought the socks from.

There is so much information out there. So much writing. Far too much writing and much of it from people who do not know how to write.

 There is writing that is true and fact checked. Writing that is false, annoying and disturbing.

There is Substack. Where the subs seem to stack up on top of each other at an alarming rate.

I know how I open my inbox only to trash 30 things, 16 of which I might have signed on for and the others of which just found their way to me. And I refuse to take surveys.

So, alas, I was giving you a gift. One less voice you had to turn off to get some peace during this very unpeaceful time in the world.

However, today is GIVING TUESDAY.  It’s funny how they do that, once you are totally tapped out from Cyber Monday and Black Friday, the world then wants you to give to charity. Do you think we should start with Giving Tuesday, then we are too tapped out for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And Black Friday now starts about two weeks ahed of the actual Friday after Thanksgiving.

Perhaps making it fall on Tuesday  is playing on our guilt.  OK, did you need that 96” TV when one out of eight school children in NYC is living in a shelter or homeless?

Which gets me to my meta message here, and it should come as no surprise as I have been asking and you have all been – not all – but manyhave been very generous over the years with my New York Cares Coat Drive.

In fact, I am now I think the record holder for single person, most coats raised for five years running.

And I am back at this year, only this year I do have a partner in Coat Driving.

My friend Jaime Rosenstein could not stand to see the freezing New Yorker and asked me what she could do. I said, you can donate coats to New York Cares. You can start your own drive, or you can join up with me, it’s kind of lonely ten years doing it alone.  So Jaime threw her coat lot in with me and we are really doing well. Thank you, Jaime. Two is more fun than one when it comes to this.

It’s same ole tune.  We are not accepting actual coats.
Twenty-five dollars buys one new coat for a person in need.

It also buys them hot meals.

Our mission statement is on our page, which you can see if you click here. The blue DONATE button on our page sends the money directly to our pot. Otherwise it ends up in the bigger New York Cares pot and I have to call them and they have to find it and put it with ours.

Anything you can give we are deeply grateful for.

For your amusement if you click here, you can see a video, I sent out to ask for help with this drive.

Also, I am doing much more content on Instagram than on this site.

I do videos these days.  Five minutes. No reading required. Just me talking into the camera and sharing ideas and thoughts, the way I have been on this site going on twenty years now.

My Instagram is @traceydjackson

Only if you miss me.

And I will still drop in here, when I feel I have something to say. Something that does not just fill the space and waste your time. And I promise no surveys.

For now, It’s GIVING TUESDAY….

Please help us help those in need.  I know I say it every year, but this year the need is more intense than ever.

And trust me without you, I would never have been able to pull off raising as much for coats as I have.

I am truly grateful – every Tuesday for the contributions you have made over the years to this very worthy cause.

In case you missed the link it’s here again.

The post DIDN’T SHE JUST DO THE COAT DRIVE? appeared first on Tracey Jackson.