7AM tomorrow: we go to Burning Man again.  Should be interesting, a year later!  I feel less crazy in the head than I was then.  It’s good to be improving.

On another very related note, we just finished our final grant decision process meeting for the Social Justice Fund’s Next Generation Giving Project.  We’ve raised over $110k (that’s “k” as in “kthousand”!) to be given to 11 groups in the Northwest- WA, OR, ID, WY, and MT.  (I don’t think we’ve made our decision public yet, or I’d say which ones.)

It’s been a great process!  I’ve learned a lot about how philanthropy works.  I’ve learned a lot about listening and being open, too.  I’ve not been great about this in the past, as I’ve got both a somewhat conservative upbringing and a somewhat insecure personality, so I’d often tend to think “ehh this is peacenik hippie dreaming-in-the-flowers highfalutin nonsense” about these topics*.  Just so I could feel superior!

*“these topics” being: causes, giving, social justice, community organizing, leadership development, and particularly class.  Class (as in “upper-middle class”, “working class”) is everywhere!  It’s more of a thing than race!  It’s so pervasively woven through my subconscious!  Yeesh!

Anyway, that was a ridiculous mode of thinking by me in the past, I’ve made a conscious effort not to think like that during this process, it felt really good, and now enough about me, we’ll give a bunch of grants.  The effects will take a long time to manifest, if they ever do.  It was a lot of work, of a type that I don’t really enjoy.  But the atmosphere, the people, and the possible large amounts of good that will come out of this have made it definitely worth it.  As a wise man once said: what goes around comes around.  Or, all things are interconnected.  Or, karma karma karma karma.  At any rate, this probably will do some real good.  Woo!