Aw yus frens it's been a hot minute since I did a challenge, so we're doing another December-themed one! You might remember last year I held the Evergreen December Challenge, which was an environmentally-themed, month-long contest. This December's contest is going to be about random acts of kindness! Steem has been pretty down lately - I've felt down about it, I've seen others feeling down about it - and not just the price, but the whole environment. We've got people downvoting to counter Hive account@steembasicincome votes now, which is just crazy to me as SBI is there helping the little redfish and minnows and is a win-win situation in that if you want to invest in it, you also are buying shares for others as well - it's a community-driven, helping-each-other system! There's nothing "abusive" about it, but there you are - "new Steem" seems to have brought out the bullies even more than before. A lot of people are understandably frustrated!

So I thought, my favorite thing about Steem has always been the #ophumanangels community. I know, I know, it's been pretty quiet of late (the whole blockchain has been pretty quiet of late... ), but I still harbor hope that we can #bringbacktheops because dammit it just feels good to do nice things, don't you think? I know I'm always inspired when I see other people's posts about ops, and it gives me ideas!

Sooooooooooooooooo I call this one The Kindest Night Of The Year challenge (since I celebrate the solstice which is the longest night of the year)!

How It Works

Do as many of these 31 ideas for random acts of kindness as you want!

1. Give someone a compliment
2. Let someone cut in front of you in line
3. Hold the door open for someone
4. Hide a kind note for someone to find
5. Donate some books to a Little Free Library
6. Put some money in a vending machine so the next person can get a free drink (or whatever)
7. Send a thank you note to someone
8. Feed wildlife (safely! Birdseed or something)
9. Offer to help someone
10. Let a car in front of you in traffic or give up your seat on the bus if it’s crowded
11. Send a snail mail letter to someone you care about or a prisoner in jail
12. Give a gift to your mail carrier, the super or maintenance person of your building, the barista you see every morning, or someone else who serves you on a regular basis
13. Shovel the snow off someone else’s sidewalk or stairs, or a bus stop
14. Pick up litter (don’t forget to tag that one #cleanplanet!)
15. Give money to a homeless person
16. Bake extra and share
17. Volunteer
18. Smile and say “hello” to people you pass by throughout your day
19. Plant a free tree with my referral code (hee hee): http://onetreeplanted.refr.cc/wrenpaasch
20. Visit elders or sick people in a nursing home, or animals in the shelter
21. Tell someone how much they mean to you
22. Find a book about a group of people you don’t know much about, and learn more about them
23. Sign a petition, donate to a GoFundMe, or write a letter to a company or politician about a cause you care about
24. Learn how to say a few basic things in another language (this includes sign language!)
25. Put things back in the correct place and make the shelf neat when you’re in the store. Retail workers’ lives are going to be crazy this month! Be extra nice to them.
26. Buy fair trade chocolate or coffee, or something from a local artisan
27. When putting your shopping cart back in the corral, grab another stray one from the parking lot and put it back, too. This helps both the workers as well as other drivers who might hit it.
28. Put change in someone’s expired parking meter
29. Tend to some place that is sacred; clean up a gravesite, or a temple, or a church, or make an offering or light a candle (where it’s allowed, don’t go setting a graveyard on fire please). In our modern world we tend to disconnect and everything becomes drab and mundane. Do something that feeds your soul (and also the souls of others who hold that place sacred too)!
30. Invite someone to a gathering or for an outing who you think might be lonely or have nowhere to go over the holidays
31. Leave a good review for a business or worker, and/or tip well. Usually people only hear about complaints!

Then Write a Post

Write about your experience(s) doing the kindness acts. Pictures are great, but obviously not all of them are photo opportunities, so we're doing this on the honor system. Cheating on a kindness contest would be pretty terrible, so I have faith that y'all are honest. ;)

Post By Saturday, December 21st

That's the winter solstice. Entries are closed after the date has passed in my time zone, so at 00:01 am on 22 Dec MST. PUT THE LINK TO YOUR POST IN THE COMMENTS OF THIS ONE so I can find it. Be sure to tag it #ophumanangels as well!

Winners Are Chosen By My Cats

If you're a follower of my blog you know that Maggie and Yuan judge all my contests. Everyone who enters gets their name put on a piece of paper, and I put a treat or catnip on all the papers, and whichever one my cat(s) go to first is the winner. There will be three winners, so it will be the first three treats they choose to eat!

I am ready for the treats.

Prizes!

First Place

wins 5 shares of SBI (because fuck bullies! I love SBI! LOL), 2 Steem in Hive account@dustsweeper votes (if you don't know Dusty, he scans for "dust" votes and upvotes them to get them above the threshold so you actually get paid), AND 5 Steem sent to the Steem-project of your choice: Hive account@drutter for the Mission: Agua-Possible project in Venezuela, Hive account@schoolforsdg4 to support the school in Bangladesh, or Hive account@treeplanter to support tree planting in Cameroon. :)

Second Place

wins 3 shares of SBI, 2 Steem in Hive account@dustsweeper votes, and 5 Steem sent to one of the three Steem-funded projects of your choice

Third Place

wins 2 Steem in Hive account@dustsweeper votes and 5 Steem sent to one of the 3 projects of your choice.

So Go Be Kind

Because kindness rules! :D