December means  Christmas, which to most means presents and food and drink and parties…and to be fair it does to an extent to me too but I’ve been thinking lately about the spirit of Christmas, the good will to all men and peace on earth sentiment possibly the romantic view but I thought why can’t it be like that? At least a little bit anyway, All it would take is a little effort to put a smile on peoples faces…

…So this December has been decreed Good Deed December, my own advent of good deeds.

Between now and Christmas day I plan on trying to complete a good deed each day and hopefully update here and my twitter feed (@essitam) using the tag #gooddeedfortheday, (when I get around to it, I suck at keeping blogs up to date maybe this is the impetus I need).

I’m sure some deeds will be more worthy than others but it’s important to remember the little things also count……

1st December Carried a ladies bags up a flight of stairs.

2nd December Dispatched James to an elderly neighbours to get her shopping list and went to the super market after work just for her (I needed nothing myself)

3rd December took the lovely lady in the post office a Lemsip, she was suffering when she dealt with my parcels and I thought she could do with it.

4th December held a door open for a lady with a pushchair, no other opportunities really presented themselves today, although James and TBK were more successful clearing and salting both our neighbours paths while I was at work – although does working on a Saturday count as a good deed 😉

(bonus good deed for today, bought my boys an advent calendar, as they hadn’t got one…does that count?)

5th December double whammy today. Sorted out my wardrobe and donated all my old things the charity and while shopping we spotted someone getting into their car whose little boy dropped their gloves so TBK and I left the store to reunite gloves and owner.

6th December Went hunting for Epsom salts for fellow twitter user Jayne Howarth and found some, only to have the benefit of the good deed undone on the way home when browsing twitter I discovered she’d already found some should have checked twitter before I embarked on my search….

….but that’s ok because today I also said I’d help my friend promote the charity she works for, Liberty UK. She asked for the extra push from her friends as all donations made through the BIG GIVE website everyday after 10am between today and December 10th will be doubled (up to £20,000)! Check it out and donate if you can.

7th December Volunteered to walk across town to deliver a parcel so my colleagues didn’t have to go out in this cold weather.

8th December Think my sister might be taking advantage of me, I keep getting requests off her – Can you do XXXX for me….it could be your good deed for today! – But as I spent a lot of the day cooped up in the office and then rushing about I obliged her and as today’s good deed I have arranged printing, delivery and framing of my sister’s mother in law’s Christmas present – and if she gets her way tomorrow’s good deed will be another one for her too – maybe my good deed should  just be tolerance of her abuse of my good deed pledge! 😉

•23:30 and a Bonus #gooddeedfortheday just spent 30 mins on the phone helping a friend fill in another application form. When I say help I mean dictating, she’d make a brilliant PA, we seem to have spent a lot of time recently with her taking down what I’m saying over the phone.

9th December fun one today,. It’s TBK’s birthday so I decided to spread a little happiness to everyone else too, myself, my sister and my friend went to the local town, took a tub of sweets to the shopping centre and offered them to anyone we encountered, fellow customers, shop staff or passers by. It raised a few suspicious looks, a couple of frowns but mostly smiles and laughs, with one guy politely declining our offer only to reappear a few minutes later with a laugh to take some of Haribos finest.

10th December Took the time to ask someone I barely know what was wrong when they looked a little down, spent the next hour offering advise and support as it turned out  they needed someone to lean on a whole lot more than you could tell -  sometimes peoples brave fronts crumble when someone cares enough to ask what’s wrong.

11th December Last night was TBK’s birthday “sleep over” we had six 10 & 11 year olds  in our house hence I use the term sleep very loosely, they were up all night so we haven’t actually left the house today, but I still did a good deed – or at least the last guest to leave thinks so.
One of TBK’s friends parents has had to work all day today and he should have gone to his Nan’s when leaving here but he really didn’t want to,  So despite being kept awake until late, woken early and eaten out of house and home, we volunteered to look after him here so he didn’t have to go.

12th December as she was unable to do it herself I spent a good proportion of today scanning in 400+ old family photos for a friend who wants to send a disk to her brother in America for Christmas.

13th December got home from work and noticed a large amount of broken glass in the street so went and fetched the broom dustpan and brush and swept it all up putting it into the bin – slicing my thumb open in the process – DOH!

14th December This good deed each day thing is harder than it sounds when you spend all day sat behind a desk at work, working through lunch and then rush home on public transport to complete Mom duties – Opportunities to help people out or to just do something nice don’t tend to just present themselves when you’re engrossed in WordPress or excel!

Anyway today’s good deed was part good deed, part self indulgence – I offered and subsequently bought a Big Issue seller a cup of tea – he wasn’t actually selling the Big Issue at the time but I recognised him from when I do buy the Big Issue from him – the self indulgent part was I also bought myself a Toffee Nut Latte from Starbucks to treat myself (and flirt with the man behind the counter) at the same time!

15th December Today’s good deed was used to help someone else fulfil a good deed.

I helped a man plot a surprise for a friend. He wanted to send her a card with a cinema ticket in for a film that she really wanted to see and she thought she’d missed on the big screen but  Light House are re running, but he didn’t want her to know it was from him, So I wrote out the card and envelope in an attempt to help him evade recognition and offered to deliver it on my way home.

16th December it appears when opportunity doesn’t present itself I always have the fall back option to complete one of the many things my sister has asked be to do as my good deed, today I went into town to fetch her secret santa gift… Not a gift for her, but a gift for her to give.

Bonus good deed, just been called upon to play nurse to my brother taking him sympathy and soup to his bed as he and his girlfriend both have the lurgy. I’m a good big sister to my siblings I am.

17th December I didn’t get out of work until late so no chance to do anything really…unless you count the working through every lunch break this week, and occasionally staying late to help cover for the various staff who are off work.

18 December messaged my grandparents to check they were ok and didn’t need to go out in the snow, dropped a note to the neighbour with our phone numbers on so she can get in touch with us if she needs anything so she doesn’t have to go out either, lots if weather based good deeds today.

19th December coordinated the clearing of our neighbours paths of snow and ice … The cold weather makes doing good deeds easy.

20th December went to work on the first day of my Christmas holiday and ended up criss crossing town with a pile of letters to find an open Post Office as the one I usually use was flooded  to ensure people Christmas cards were sent out on time – I’d already posted all mine but well i was asked nicely… evening spent the night selling merch at a bands ep launch despite it snowing heavily and not knowing if we’d get home (we did eventually after our train was cancelled and B’ham

……

……

19 January…It’s now mid January and as you can see the last post update I made was  20th December – so did I fail in my Good Deed for the Day mission, NOT AT ALL.

I completed the full 24 days I just absolutely suck at keep blogs up to date and as Christmas came closer I had less time to sit in front of the computer and blog, and even though I have WordPress for Android installed on my phone I just never got around to updating here. I did keep tweeting though through out the whole advent so if you were following me there you would have seen the last of my “Deeds”.

I thought I’d finish this post of with a “Thank You”, Thank you for the encouragement I received from people who read this, friends and strangers on Facebook and Twitter, Thank you to the people who smiled when I did something nice for them, But Thank You mostly for the couple of people who’ve been intouch to say as a result of this post they’d carried out good deeds of their own.

I may suck at keeping blog posts up to date but I can do nice things for others and you can too!!