Within and without

I’ll admit it. I’m a red light phone-checker. I’m strictly opposed to texting while driving, but often, as soon as my car comes to a stop at a light, I will check my phone for messages. Still, I never really expect to receive a text from someone sitting next to me in traffic.

“I hope you factored that breakfast you’re eating in your car into the $2.25/day budget,” is what popped onto my phone from Josh Howard while I was commuting to work recently. “Bananas can be expensive, ha ha.”

With that I was reminded that Howard and Ryan Chenevert, the locals behind popular budget-hunting blog 2BRokeGuys, had just launched the city’s first Geaux For Broke campaign benefiting the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank.

2BRokeGuys challenged Baton Rougeans to spend just $2.25 on food per day during one week in late September, then donate the difference between that miniscule sum and what they would normally pay for a day’s worth of meals to the Food Bank to help those in need in our community.

And I was on the hook now, spotted in traffic by the organizer, chomping on a banana on my way to work.

This wasn’t going to be easy. I’m a thin guy—not a lot of fat stores to live off of in case of food shortages, self-imposed or otherwise. Years ago I enacted a rule with 225‘s photographers: Any submission of food photography before lunchtime is strictly prohibited, and also, you know, heartless.

I can do this, I thought. This was already a week of challenges. In what an astute friend quickly labeled my “First World problems,” the server, Internet connection and email system at 225 were all on the fritz, making communication extraordinarily difficult.

It wasn’t until I lost these things that I realized just how much subliminal multi-tasking I do with the help of technology. Without them, I was forced to be more patient and to truly focus on one thing at a time, which anyone waiting at a red light can tell you is not easy. At first, the loss was near-maddening.

Maybe it was best that way, I thought. There’s an ironic and remarkable efficiency to cramming all of your IT fails into the same week.

Lunch at 1:30 p.m. was a granola bar. Not one of the glorious fresh-baked varieties from Our Daily Bread, but a dense, bark-like slate by Nature’s Valley, courtesy of the break room vending machine.

As I listened to my colleagues grumble about our email snags, all I could think was, “I would trade my computer for a cheeseburger—straight up.” For dinner I would eat an apple and a little peanut butter, but already that afternoon the lesson was learned.

Just like with our computer malfunctions, without the comfort of knowing I could eat just about anything I wanted, I was forced to focus on one thing. And that’s the fact that I’m an incredibly fortunate person in a community filled with others who are not. For that I am thankful, but also challenged.

As we approach Thanksgiving this month, please consider making a donation to the Food Bank, or simply sharing a meal with someone in need. Let’s not just be thankful. Let’s be people for whom others are thankful. brfoodbank.org