Today was gross, weather-wise that is.  I left my apartment after work in a downpour and headed to my buddy’s house for a ride to NH.  On the sidewalk about a block from my apartment I came across a women’s winter hat lying in the middle of the sidewalk.  Initially I walked right by it lugging my hiking backpack with my headphones in my ears.  After a few steps I stopped, turned around, and scanned the both sides of the sidewalk looking for a hat-less person who may have dropped theirs on the ground.  Not seeing anyone, I went back and picked up the hat and put it on a fence post.  Hopefully it was displayed prominently enough that it would be recognized, but out of the way enough so that no one would step on it.  It must have recently been dropped because it was still in good (yet soggy) condition.

The pre-January Life Experiment in me would have just walked by it, “Not my hat, not my problem.”  However, today I stopped to look around, pick it up, and get it off the sidewalk so in case the person came back looking for it, they’d find it in good condition, not ruined as it would have been had it stayed on the sidewalk.  In Maine this is something I definitely would have noticed and done something about but for some reason I ignore these types of things in Boston with the “Not my ___, not my problem” type of attitude.  This month I’ve been breaking out of that attitude quite a bit and I hope my new attitude is one that sticks in my post-January life.