Reply #3: Helping people, person to person, is the best!

[ThomCat]

If you have ever really given volunteering a chance, I hope you enjoyed it. I always thought it was the best hobby.

It's dirty and messy. You work your ass off. Depending on where you volunteer, you might not know what you will be doing today, or this week. Or maybe your work will be monotonously the same. But the people volunteer with will probably be wonderful people, and the people you help will almost always be very kind people who really need you and appreciate everything you do.

(Okay, so some of the people you help really resent needing help so badly, and resent being so needy. They sometimes take it out on volunteers verbally and hate us for it. But that's okay too so long as it's only verbal and harmless. We all understand that people need to vent. We all need to vent sometimes. Giving people who are the most helpless, defenseless and needy someone to safely vent to can be part of the volunteer work. Point them to the volunteer with the thickest skin and smile. That makes people feel better too. We can all hug and talk about it afterward.) :)

Now that I can't physically do the different types of volunteer work any more I really miss it. I miss the people. I miss the work. I miss knowing that it was more directly meaningful than anything I could get a corporate paycheck for doing.

Once people know that you do volunteer work, and enjoy it, you will find contacts to interesting volunteer work in surprising places. People you meet through co-workers, or even through clients, or through friends, or through social groups, or through friends of friends who have heard of you will tell you about some cool place that has an event or a project and needs volunteers. From there you can end up volunteering for a day, or a weekend, or a season, or for years, and it can be an incredible experience every time.