the next morning...

three days until World AIDS Day...

if you read regularly or subscribe to this site (and i know there's a couple of you), you may have noticed that my efforts to blog on AIDS issues throughout the month have significantly declined in the last few days. it's largely due to last week. over Thanksgiving weekend, between Wed & Sun, i logged something over 40 hours working on World AIDS Day. i packed it in around family time and turkey meals. i missed meals four days in a row and skipped out on sleep most of two nights.

and so when i walked off the stage on Sunday and the video had been completed, the website was up and runnning, and i'd finished presenting to both services in Green, i was tired. i didn't want to think about AIDS anymore. all the i'd been working toward and pushing toward for the last month was finished and now i just wanted to sit and see what the response was.

it reminded me of the gulf between myself and the person who lives with the reality of AIDS every day. who misses their mother or father. who doesn't have the strength to get out of bed. who cares for the grandchildren, because there is no one else to do it.

their fight doesn't finish on December 1st. they can't take a couple comp. days for working over vacation. they'll wake up to it the next morning whether they want to or not. or they won't wake up. and some child will have to raise themselves and become one more added to the millions of AIDS orphans.

but this is also why i care about these things. because i can't NOT care. there's too much at stake. some may think i may appear idealistic and foolishly hopeful, spending my passions on world issues that i can barely influence, let alone solve. but i don't care. because it'll be worth it for the few i am able to influence. and i AM foolishly idealistic. and i love it. we can, i believe, really enact global change of gigantic proportions in the next generation. but it's not going to happen with me sitting on the couch.

and so i take a deep breath and plunge back it...