Please! Please! I speak for the trees.

– The Lorax

Sometimes I feel like the human incarnation of the Lorax. I’ve always felt deeply connected with nature, and as a result, I feel a deep inclination to help the planet however I can.

Today I locked my keys in my car. Not once – but twice. Back to back.

I was shopping at Hobby Lobby, and the entire day, my brain was elsewhere. I kept thinking about all the projects I’m balancing, how many deadlines I have to meet, how many wreaths I have to finish, how I still have to decorate my own home for Christmas, what I need to publish for content for the week, what I need to get ready for upcoming markets, how I’m going to budget my time and my money, and most importantly – how I wanted to be at home crafting and not out running errands.

After I left Hobby Lobby, I had the brilliant idea to stop at my favorite boba place, H2O by Got Tea in Pinellas Park, because I’d earned enough points to get a free boba tea. Not thinking, I hit the “lock” button on my door with the keys still inside. As I placed my order, I had a sinking feeling. It had just registered that I’d locked my keys in my car.

I called my partner, and he left work to come to my rescue. I waited outside the boba place for nearly two hours as he drove to Pinellas Park from Tampa. He unlocked my car using the spare key, and I was off to the grocery store.

Well, at the grocery store, I unknowingly did it… again… after I’d filled my cart full of groceries, I went out to discover my keys in the same place they were the first time, in sight but out of reach.

I called my partner again… and man, was he angry. He’d just driven from Pinellas Park to Clearwater and had to turn around to rescue me… again. I felt awful. I sat down on the curb feeling defeated and looked around. There was trash as far as the eye could see. I mean, it literally looked like I was sitting on a trash island.

I looked over at my cart, and the garbage bags I’d just purchased were staring back at me. So I decided, instead of doing nothing (since my phone was dead anyways) I got out a bag and started picking up litter. I used one bag as a glove and the other bag as the trash bag.

In the thirty minutes I was there, I’d filled up an entire bag full of trash. When I was finished, I wiped the sweat from my brow and admired my work. The scene looked so pristine. Immaculate, even.

This is desperate cry for help. I can’t emphasize this enough – we are responsible for caring for our planet. I don’t care how we inherited it. I don’t care whose mess it was. We all have a moral obligation to DO SOMETHING. Kinda like see something, say something? See something, DO something.

I’ll be organizing litter cleanups soon under my new program called the Sustainable Earth Initiative. I hope you all will join me. The feeling that washed over me when I was finished, driving away from the site that I MYSELF cleaned is indescribable. So unbelievably rewarding.

Please help Mother Earth. She needs us, and we need her.

Also, another point I’d like to add – our phones are killing us, and the planet. If my phone didn’t die, I never would have looked up and been forced to confront the sad reality that is our world. Our phones offer a great distraction, and if the events didn’t play out the way they did, I may not have acted, because I never would have even looked up.

The moral of the story here is two-fold, one – do your part, care for nature, clean up messes, even if you didn’t create them, and two – put the phone away. Breathe. Live in the moment. Experience the here and now. It’s the only way it’s ever going to get better. Intention with no action is wasted effort. Intention with action creates forward perpetual motion.