Sometimes I think if I planned my life better, I’d never do anything. I’d be paralysed with indecision and see too clearly the reasons not to do something. Whereas now I can look back and think, yeah, that’s exactly what I meant to do. In retrospect.

For example, if I had meant to hold an online charity auction, and had researched the logistics and estimated the time and the likelihood of raising more than I could comfortably just donate myself, I probably would have said to hell with it and given Kids Help Phone $50.

But even after spending an entire weekend emailing and packing and shipping after the Friday close of the auction I accidentally held, I’m so glad I didn’t actually plan it and give myself the opportunity to abandon it.

I started the TV, eh? website in much the same accidental way. I’d written something about how Canada needed a site like The Futon Critic that had information on Canadian shows. Someone said “if you see a need, why don’t you start it?” After my initial “why would I? And I don’t have time” I started it quietly, on a whim one night, figuring if no one cared I’d abandon it. That was 6 years ago.

With the auction, I had the vague thought that I’d get some prizes from my contacts and have a draw to encourage people to donate to a good cause during the Christmas season. I didn’t know what prizes or what cause or exactly how I would do the draw. Whatever. Details.

I started by asking some of my TV industry friends and acquaintances and PR contacts for items to donate, figuring if they couldn’t help the idea would die anyway. But they said yes. All of them. And they gave me really good stuff. And I realized I’d raise way more money through an auction than a draw.

So I asked for help deciding on a charity, and I asked other people for more stuff, and suddenly I had this full-blown auction with over 70 items up for bid on my hands before I had time to think, well, shit, how am I going to do this when I’ve never auctioned anything off before in my life? I don’t think I’ve even bought anything in an auction. But I got fascinated by the mechanics of it, and the setting up of my WordPress site to host it, and the psychology of bidding.

Not nearly as suddenly we raised over $6,500 for Kids Help Phone, and there’s still one package left that got caught at customs and a couple other smaller items that winning bidders are re-donating to the cause. When I filled out their Third Party Event form I told Kids Help Phone I wanted to raise $2,000 – I didn’t want to raise expectations too much, since I had no idea how to estimate how much money we’d raise. Secretly, though, I hoped for $5,000. So I’m thrilled at the almost-final total.

After sending out thank yous to donors, I’m getting some “we’ll be happy to donate next year” responses. Next year? Oh. Right. Maybe I will make it an annual event. And next time I’ll actually plan it using lessons learned from this year, especially the lesson that it was fun and worthwhile, and most of all that it’s inspiring to be part of this online community that responded to an initial vague idea with “sure, what can we do to help?”

A few years ago I printed off an application form to be a Big Sister – perhaps surprising news to friends who know I’ve never wanted children of my own, but perhaps not to those who have seen me with their children.

I was intimidated by the form, specifically the scenarios where I was supposed to predict how I’d react in certain challenging situations, but mostly I put the idea aside when the Olympic job ate my life.

Before even getting to the form printing stage, I was required to read the mentor program requirements and the Big Intro for Big Sisters. And suddenly, after not thinking about it for decades, I wished I could go back and explain some facts to shy, quiet seven-year-old me.

I would have been around seven when someone initiated my application to be a Little Sister – I know that because I remember where we were living, but also because, as I found out a few years ago, seven is the minimum intake age. That was probably explained to me, but I hadn’t absorbed it.

My big brother had already been matched with a Big Brother so not only did I think I was an afterthought, I had in my little mind that Big Brothers were for boys who didn’t have fathers and Big Sisters were for girls who didn’t have mothers. But I had a mother. I thought there was something illicit about my application, though that was probably explained to me, too. But you don’t explain to a seven year old that she’s been identified as high-risk and in need of a mentor because her father’s dead and mother has schizophrenia. You explain that she might like someone to do fun things with.

I was never matched. That was probably explained to me too as the simple equation it is: more Little Sisters on the list than Big Sisters applying. But even a seven year old can do the math that some are chosen and some aren’t, and she wasn’t.

I don’t mean for this to be a poor little seven-year-old-me story. In fact it’s the opposite. Because she grew up to be me, and I’ve got a great life and a great career and great friends and I want to use my journey from her to me to help mentor another her. I’ve dug out the application again and this time I’ve even filled it out.

If I ever doubt how different I am today from the shy, anxious kid I once was, I just have to look at one of the items I contributed to my TV, eh? Midseason Charity Auction benefitting Kids Help Phone.

I would have been 14 when I bought the 1984/85 Edmonton Oilers program at a game, and I’d have collected the autographs over the season. It was a thing we did, us junior high school girls: pick a favourite player (mine was Andy Moog), go to the public practices at West Edmonton Mall or buy nosebleed tickets, and after the game hang out at the players’ exit with our autograph books or programs.

My regret now is that I got Wayne Gretzky’s signature in my little green book, gilt-embossed with “Autographs” on its cover, camp friends’ farewells and teachers’ encouragements signed inside, instead of in the program – it would have been a bigger selling feature today. But back then, I just wanted as many as I could get, whether I had the program with me or not, whether it was a big-name player or not. Another one in that green book was rookie Steve Graves, who never did play much in the NHL and who I remember as one of my favourites because he was so nice, so touched to be asked to sign.

1984/85 was the season after the team won their first Stanley Cup, gloriously defeating their then-nemeses. I remember being almost glad they hadn’t won in 83/84 when they first made the final against the New York Islanders, because I thought my joy might be too much to handle.

Then, I could name every player on the roster, in order of their jersey numbers. Now, I can’t even name all the teams in the NHL.

Was my interest back then partly a way to bond with classmates? I’d changed schools countless times in elementary school, and from tempermant and necessity developed mostly solitary interests. Maybe. Or maybe I was just an average Canadian, excited by our fast-paced official winter sport. In fact I watched televised games alone more often than not, riveted to the action of the ice.

Then, I even knew what icing meant. Today, I’m neither a hockey fan nor a collector of anything. Granted, growing up with a team that won 5 Stanley Cups before I was 20 might have set the bar too high to sustain my interest, but really I stopped following hockey after a brief stint in university of working for the team store during games. I didn’t have a television, I was going to school full-time and working two part-time jobs, and hockey wasn’t a priority anymore.

As an adult I also moved at least every two years – averaging a lot more back then, breaking the streak now that I bought a place a couple of years ago. But the moves, especially the one to Mexico, when I sold or gave away many of my possessions, erased any residual collector instinct I might have had.

Still, I kept that Oilers program. It had been so important to 14-year-old me. I had a vague thought that I could only give it to someone who would cherish at much as I had, but because it now represents experiences rather than a collection of signatures, that seemed impossible. Until now: I’m happy to give it up for Kids Help Phone, in memory of the kid I once was, a kid who could have used someone to talk to during a time I thought I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone, a time when hockey gave me more joy than I thought I could handle.

Shortly after I joined twitter, the post-election protests in Iran were a hot topic among the television crowd I followed. It was disconcerting, not to read the snippets of TV criticism and fan squealing amid such seriousness, but to read the seriousness amid the fluff. 140 characters doesn’t give a lot of room for profound thought, so a good percentage of my Twitter stream came off as trite but well-meaning.

Still, as the platform has matured and I’ve settled into my comfort zone with it, there’s generally a nice balance of serious discussion and frivolity I find less jarring, now.

So between Tweets, Facebook status updates, and longwinded blog posts, a lot of pixels have been dedicated to my thoughts, both serious and frivolous. As with all but the most oversharey of us, those online thoughts represent a fraction of what goes on in my little head. That’s partly because even I don’t care about every thought that goes through my brain, partly because I value my privacy and the privacy of my friends and family.

Reading my online output, I think you get a decent sense of my personality, an occasional glimpse of what’s going on in my life, but a poor sense of my daily joys and worries … which is true of most people, I’d guess.

I didn’t post about Amy Winehouse’s death, though I’m a fan of her music, and had feared her final self-destruction, and was saddened to hear that she didn’t manage to finally overcome her demons.

I also didn’t post about the mass murder in Norway because I had nothing to add to that discussion beyond what everyone felt: I was horrified. Duh. None of my friends are looking to me for that great insight into current affairs, none of my friends are in Norway, and I don’t believe in sending nebulous “good vibes” via Internet so all discussions I had were offline. I don’t need to prove I know or care about world events via Facebook status update.

But I know people who posted about both, or only Winehouse, and got slammed for caring about the dead artist instead of the dead Norwegians. My Twitter stream was full of Winehouse < Norway comments.

Which brings me to my point, finally: what kind of messed up thinking is it to believe we have to prove the depth of our feeling through a social media status update? Or that we have to rate tragedies and only care about the top one percent (as determined by … who?). How limited are we if we’re not capable of caring about both Norway and Winehouse? And why was Norway being held up as the gold standard of what people are supposed to care about?

I did post about the Canadian government’s decision to match donations to charities who are helping with famine relief in East Africa, an announcement that came a couple of days after the UN declared the famine and the same day as the Norway massacre. I don’t think everyone has a duty to give to any one specific cause, but in a period of feeling helpless about horrible news coming from so many sides, it made me feel better to take action. I know many people hadn’t heard about the extent of the crisis, or what our government is doing, or what we can do to help. You could tell me you have no interest in donating and I wouldn’t think less of you, but I’m glad you had the chance to evaluate where that cause fits in your list. There are so many things in the world we could choose to care about and do something about, but we have to pick or be overwhelmed with the choice.

Because I posted about Somalia and not Norway doesn’t mean I care more about Somalia, any more than posting about my cats means I care more about my cats than my friend struggling with a degenerative disease. It means I found it easier to form a coherent thought about Somalia over Norway, and that other people covered everything there was to say about Norway before I could and better than I could.

People posting about Amy Winehouse don’t necessarily care about her over, say, their friend who’s struggling with addiction, but maybe they aren’t airing their friend’s personal issues to everyone in their social media networks. Maybe Amy Winehouse is an artist whose work affected them personally and they want an outlet to express their grief. Maybe we feel a more personal connection to an artist whose work touches us than we do to the faceless victims of a massacre or famine.

If people think that’s wrong, then I’d like to hear their explanation of the purpose of art. Maybe they don’t care about talents like Cobain, Hendrix, Joplin, River Phoenix, Amy Winehouse dying so young, the waste of so much potential to addiction and the high price of fame, but why diminish others’ grief?

There was in most of the admonishments a whiff-to-a-stench of the sanctimonious, not just in judging those who were grieving Winehouse, but in judging Winehouse herself. To them, I’d say: if you think addicts who don’t turn their lives around by 27 don’t deserve to be mourned, you do not hold the moral high ground. Not every thought deserves to be posted via social media, and maybe criticizing other people’s grief is an example.