Hi fellow Hiveians,

Today I wanted to share some pictures of the beautiful weather and cleaning my son and I did the other day!

The lake is definitely one of our favorite places to be. We've gone there for years now, and I'm really happy we reconnected with some family members, one of them who owns property on it.

The little man and I have been doing small cleanup jobs all over the place, and one of the ones we enjoy the most is also one of the places that we spend the most time at, so it only makes sense! We love going to the lake, but I get frustrated when I see all of the damn trash all over the place, and how little some people care about the planet.

I know that people are just people, and sadly there are a lot of mistakes that are made on a daily basis. These mistakes can be intentional or accidental but they still get made. I would like to think that the people who are throwing trash down on the ground or letting it fly around are not intentionally throwing it there but instead forgetting it or something. I know there are sadly a subset of people who will do these things on purpose, and that's fairly frustrating.

One of the things I try to do as a parent is be a good model for my son. It's not always something that works out, as I make mistakes often but I try to improve upon that every day as much as I can. If we can improve on things like this daily, then we are at least heading in the right direction!

One thing I really try to do is set a good example for him, to know that there are people and things that are the best they can be. By taking him out and intentionally cleaning up a place, I show him that it's important that we don't stand by and let a place fall apart. The world runs and relies on people who care but also who take action. If we all wanted "someone else" to do something, things would never get done and quite frankly we would no longer exist as a species.

One of the things I've been trying to do for many years now is "be the change that you want to see" and that's a mantra I hold dear to my heart in as many things in life as I can. It's not always easy to do that, but the right things are never going to be always easy.

We ran into a guy when we were cleaning and he was fishing, even though it was pretty early in the season. We didn't have poles with us and we were just walking around with a bag picking things up so we started chatting with him. He said he hasn't seen anyone cleaning the place up but thanked us for doing it. I was glad to see someone while we were there, every other time we have been out there we don't see anyone but it was a beautiful day, so I don't blame him for getting out and tossing a few lines!

We scored quite a bit of trash! We filled 4 plastic bags of trash and even got two broken fishing poles hahaha. We were surprised at finding the poles, that was a new one for sure! I was glad to get them out though, and hope that the dumpster I threw them in will go to an incinerator instead of a landfill but I have no control over that aspect.

We got some pretty interesting finds with this haul besides the fishing poles! We cleaned up 4 socks and a hat. We had never seen socks before in our cleaning trips, so this was very strange to find 4 of them lol. They were all over the place too, so it wasn't like it was 2 pairs of socks by the same 2 people. There were a lot of the normal things you'd think of like glass, cans, fishing line and old plastic baits. We did get a bunch of chunks of blacktop tar from some person tossing a few from their driveway which was also a little weird.

It was nice being out in the warm sun though! We haven't been outside like this a whole lot this year due to the various things we've needed to do hahaha so it was good to have a nice warm day, get out there and do some work. We got a good sweat going and moved the lymphatic system! The winter was a pretty cold and icy one, so seeing the lake free from the ice and starting to fill up was good. There is a lot of water that needs to come in before it's fishable, and some warmer temperatures but taking advantage of the snow and ice free was good for cleaning.

I really enjoy these times with my son and hopefully these types of things end up as core memories for him. I've got a few of those doing things with my dad but a lot of it is fishing or working. We didn't really do cleanup things like this which is fine, but making it a routine should hopefully have a lasting impression on the little fella!

What about you, have you done any local cleanups like this? Is it something you enjoy or are you forced to do it?

^-CmplXty. _{Real human written content, never AI.}

Do you want to get paid, in crypto, for searching the internet? Try using and signing up for Presearch to earn some crypto! Join Presearch to break Google's stranglehold on the internet searches.