Like you – like everyone – I’ve been deeply affected and shaken by the events in Syria, the millions of refugees fleeing death and destruction, the images of children drowning in the Med or covered in blood, and most recently the horrendous events in Aleppo. My friends and I were constantly talking about it – do we just keep giving money to Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF? What about the families that might fall through the cracks? How do you know you’re REALLY helping? How can I let these people know that the world cares about them, that they matter? How many more times can I start weeping uncontrollably while reading the news, and then go to Amazon and click-buy something for my children who have never known a single night of fear or hunger, before I go insane?

And then I found out about Humanwire, from a friend of a friend in Colorado.

Humanwire is a registered charity that establishes direct contact with the refugees you’re helping, so you can see the impact that your donation has (check out these Facebook stories) – and Humanwire itself takes 0% of the money you donate. There’s total transparency: it’s kind of cutting out the charity middleman.

You choose the refugee family that you want to help, read their stories, see their photos, decide how much money to raise (“leading a campaign”) and you see how the money you raise for them gets them food, clothes, school for their children, medical care, heating over the winter… It takes 60 seconds to sign up.

My friends Anna, Joanna, Lucy, Alex and I have pledged to lead campaigns together. So we’ll work together and support each other while we raise money, and hopefully, help many more families this way than we could alone.

These are real people. These are some of the stories. Each story is heartbreaking and horrible. These people urgently need help. This is the campaign we chose, and as soon as we raise the target, we’re choosing another one. Sustained support on a case-by-case basis.

Anyway, I wanted to write about this, because it’s Christmas, and as much as we’re all complaining about 2016 being a terrible year, it’s much much worse for these families. So please, join us. Do it alone or with your family or with your friends, sign up, lead a campaign, and help a family who has no one and nothing else. The only way through this is together, and you can genuinely make a difference. The refugees are chosen on a case-by-case basis, and are extensively vetted beforehand. These are families, particularly women and children and babies, who need us.

This is a letter from the founder of Humanwire:

Thank you for taking the time to visit Humanwire. My name is Andrew and this site is the result of my frustration with the war in Syria.

As of October 19, 2015, The United Nations has officially registered 4,180,631 Syrians with the greatest concentrations in Lebanon and Turkey. In order to support this large number of people, the UN requires $4.5B but has only raised $1.8B to date [1].

The UN’s World Food Program, the largest agency in the world for fighting hunger slashed its food allowances for each refugee in Jordan in August 2015 in half down to just $14 per month. Food allowances for refugees in Lebanon per person remain a steady $13.50 per month [2].

The UN Inter Agency noted in September of 2015 that “the spike in Syrian refugees arriving in Europe, including from Syria directly, is mainly due to the loss of hope that a political solution will soon be found to end the war as well as to steadily deteriorating living conditions in exile, triggered by the humanitarian funding shortfall, felt by refugees in the region” [3]

In Sept 2015, The UN High Commissioner for Refugees was quoted as saying: “Our income in 2015 will be around 10% less than in 2014. The global humanitarian community is not broken – as a whole they are more effective than ever before. But we are financially broke.” [4].

If you read between the lines, the funding is stretched too thin and the level of support on an individual basis has become too insignificant for any one person to sustain.

I first got interested in the Syrian crisis because my wife Rima is of Syrian descent and so now is our two-year-old son Freddy. Rima grew up in Lebanon which borders Syria to the west and every time we visit family in Beirut and around the country, the effects of the refugee crisis are impossible to miss.

We live in Boulder, Colorado, regularly voted as the top city in America for living standards and when I think about the conditions of people who are fleeing persecution and war, I can’t help but question my humanity.

Lebanon, the extra friendly and once small home to 4 million people, now has 5 million almost overnight. In Lebanon, there are no formal refugee camps. There are some makeshift camps and others simply roam the country.

The influx has effected everyone in Lebanon from the bottom-up. Opportunities for work for the Lebanese which were already scarce have evaporated while social resources have been overwhelmed beyond compare.

Most refugees from Syria do not want to go to America or Canada, and most don’t want to go to Europe, either. Given the opportunity to go safely, the vast majority would just prefer to go home.

People are being born into homeless lives due to other people’s wars and growing up knowing nothing else. Young adults once happily enrolled in quality education with big dreams of becoming engineers and astronauts are being deprived of the dreams so many others have freely.

Have you given any money? Maybe even $5? I hadn’t.

Why? Why?! I spent countless hours reading news stories about it. I saw UN advertisements on every page of the internet with children distressed in boats. My credit card details would autofill in the form with one touch and yet I didn’t.

There is something about sending money into the void that is disconnected, as if there was a missed opportunity when you want to do more than just give money. Even when you trust the organization you are giving to, and even when your contribution is effective, the relationship between the contributor and the charity has not evolved much, you just send in your money which goes into a pool, hope for the best, and basically that’s it for your part. By sending your money to the charity which acts as the intermediary, you never actually get a true connection. Not even a tangible smile is exchanged.

What would happen if you removed the intermediate, or reduced its role by setting the charity organization aside to facilitate a direct connection between the donor and the recipient? That is the purpose of Humanwire.

When I first traveled to Lebanon, it was not easy because I was unfamiliar with Arab culture. Even with Rima and her loving family, it took a few trips to begin to understand people’s intentions due to the culture being so different, I thought. Now when I look back on it, I think its funny because the Arab people are just as friendly and loving as anyone I’ve ever encountered. People in Lebanon in particular are a lot like Westerners. They have many of the same interests, the same concerns and the same ways of living.

There is a cultural gap that need not exist, I’m sure of it. With today’s ability to connect around the world, this is the time for people everywhere to come together.

More than 43 million people worldwide are now forcibly displaced as a result of conflict and persecution [5]. Half of all refugees in the world are children 17 and under, most of which have lost family, home, school and friends. Humanwire is your opportunity go beyond providing mere sustainability, this is the time to take a stand and bridge the culture gap.

How about some comfort music? Listen to these in order:

Turin Brakes – Save Me

Mazzy Star – Fade Into You.

The Doves – There Goes The Fear

White Town – Your Woman

The Breeders – Cannonball

Liam Lynch – United States of Whatever

East 17 – Deep (NO JUST GO WITH IT TRUST ME)

Gorillaz – Dare

Simian – La Breeze

Paolo Nutini – New Shoes

Lonely Island – Jizz In My Pants

Feeling better?

I’ve been working hard, my friends. Writing and scheming and writing and plotting and writing and then writing some more. I can’t tell you details yet (as soon as I can… I shall), so instead, I shall tell you what else I’ve been doing: reading a good old-fashioned 1980s bonkbuster. Judith Krantz’s ‘I’ll Take Manhattan’.

What can I say. It helps switch my brain off.

When I’m writing something, I find it hard to read or watch something with a really intricate and surprising plot. I’m always thinking three moves ahead, rolling my eyes at the shitty characters or shitty dialogue. I imagine it must be like a chef trying out a new restaurant: I bet they spend entire meals assessing what this other chef is doing, what’s working, what’s not and why, and anticipating each subsequent course. It’s hard to just eat.

But Judith Krantz books have no big surprises. Nothing mind-blowing, no twists, no turns. They’re always happy and feminist in a good late-70s, early-80s way. And plot-wise, they’re delicious. Like a big glass of wine and a hunk of cheese. You can’t argue with wine and cheese sometimes. All you can do is enjoy it.

I wanted to share with you my favorite passage from ‘I’ll Take Manhattan‘:

“Curbing her quick New Yorker’s pace, Maxi moved into the Casino with felicitous poise, with the self-assurance that can never be feigned, of a beautiful woman who is perfectly at ease without an escort. She wore a long, strapless, chiffon dress that was one shade lighter than the green of her eyes, and diaphanous to the point of cruelty.”

For real. How can you not love this book?

So, I went out to LA to pitch two tv shows to producers a couple of weeks ago, and I’m heading back next week to pitch them again, this time with the producers, to studios and networks.

I’m excited.

I love these two shows. And I love pitching. I really do. It’s odd, because in most ways I am a total writery writer: I recharge when I’m alone. I think about things way too much. I have a rich inner life (in other words: I play a lot of make-believe in my head. Like a LOT. When I’m walking on the street alone you will catch me muttering to myself and doing pretend reactions… oh yah it’s seriously lame).

But I must have a latent showoff inside of me somewhere, because I love pitches. It’s probably the same showoff who liked to act in high school, until she discovered directing at college and the utter joy of being in charge of everything, and then in her 20s realized that writing was like breathing: easy, invigorating, and essential to life. (Though I often wonder what would have happened if I had actually pursued directing instead of assuming it was a club I would never be invited to join, and what would happen if I pursued it now… Never mind, that’s a thought for another post, or another year.)

Where was I? Oh right. Pitching.

Pitching is just so much damn fun. It’s a cross between a job interview and a date. I used to LOVE job interviews (a chance to talk about me? come on!) and I LOVED dating (a chance to talk about me, to guys who hadn’t heard all my adorable anecdotes? Again, come on!). I also really, really like meeting new people and talking to them about their lives and finding out what they think is interesting. I like telling people about the aforementioned make-believe stories that I made up in my head. Most of all, I like it when other people get as excited about the story as I am. That’s all that pitching is: connecting with the person, and telling them a story.

If they’re not excited about the pitch, then it’s probably because I lost focus and just plain told it badly. Or my accent got too distracting (I have a weird Hong Kong accent, somewhere between London and Australia but people think I’m Irish or South African or anything – but it’s a legit Hong Kong accent. My sister has the same accent, other expat brats have the same accent. If I hear someone in a bar with my accent I accost them like, ‘YOU MUST BE FROM HONG KONG or Singapore or maybe Dubai’, and I am always, always right. Okay sorry, back to the point). It might also be that they’ve heard something like it this season and thought it was stupid so my idea is tarnished by association, or pitched something like it a few years ago and failed badly, or bought a similar idea from someone else last week and can’t buy it again.

There is always, of course, the chance that the reason they’re not excited is that the idea is shitty, but I try hard not to not think that. I have a healthy amount of self-doubt and self-loathing, but by the time I’m in the room, I force myself to believe that the reason I flew all the way to goddamn LA and sat in traffic in a stupid Lyft and woke up at 3am with jet lag and adrenaline and got lost on the Warner Bros lot AGAIN and asked the security guys to give me a ride in the golf cart (side note: the moment I started hitchhiking around lots on golf carts, pitch life became a lot more fun and I got many less blisters, plus they get really excited that I’m there to pitch which means I get a LOT of high-fives) was worth it. Anyway, I’ve told (and sold) enough damn stories by now that I know that when an idea makes me tingle, it should make other people tingle, too. If the idea doesn’t land, it’s not the idea’s fault, it’s mine.

Another reason that a pitch doesn’t land is the simplest: they weren’t listening. Seriously: listening to a pitch is way harder than actually pitching it. It is very hard – practically fucking impossible – to listen to a WALL of words. And characters descriptions and background stories and plots and themes. I can’t imagine having meeting after meeting where you have to listen to some nervous writer stutter his or her way through a pitch and then assimilate every piece of it and rebuild it in your imagination, and then analyze it and really think about what it will look like, who will watch it, and what the advertisers will think. It must be beyond exhausting. You can tell when people stop listening – it’s like a little light in their eyes goes off. They nod a lot, but they’re clearly thinking about lunch, or needing to pee, or their boyfriend, or wife, or that new Winona Ryder show, or how amazing Leslie Jones is at tweeting the Olympics.

I can’t blame them. If you came into my office right now and told me about your eight best friends and how you know them and why you love them all, I would remember, at best, two or three of those friends. Wouldn’t you? But you can tell when someone is really listening: they go into a sort of trance. They write things down. They stare at you, barely reacting, but totally involved and engaged. They laugh at the right parts, and most of all they ask ‘so what happens next?’

That’s when you know it went okay. But you don’t always know. You can’t. You just smile, walk out, and hope for the best.

So if you need me over the next few weeks, that’s what I’ll be doing… walking out of pitches, and hoping for the best.

Another fairly fucking terrible day for humanity. This song made me feel momentarily less sick.

The first twelve seconds of this clip make me laugh out loud every time.

WHOOPEDEEDOO pretty much sums up, oh, everything, sometimes. (It’s from The Wedding Singer, by the way.) (But you already knew that.) (Did you know that? We know that stuff here, right? It’s baseline knowledge.) (It’s not like I’m assuming you’ve watched Grown-Ups or whatever. I’m not delusional.) (But I AM growing increasingly attached to these endless parentheses.) (I might just keep writing in them forever.) (Even though I have a script to finish and it’s not going to finish itself.) (See? Still doing it.) (I wish I could train my scripts to finish themselves. It’s so EXHAUSTING sometimes, like running a marathon in my head. I’m basically hallucinating the last four or five miles.) (LOOK A SCHOONER!)) (This is why people have writing partners. Because otherwise they end up writing endless parentheses just to amuse themselves and procrastinate finishing the damn script.) (If I had a writing partner, this is when I would send off my script and think ‘find me a plot twist, biyatch’.) (Then it would come back with a spelling mistake or the wrong ‘their’ and I would be forced to kill them.) (Still doing it. Still doing the parentheses.) (It’s just a really good way to avoid having to make a point.) (Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Going now. No seriously. I’m hanging up. You hang up. Stop reading.) (Stop reading!) (Seriously!) (Bye. Mwah. Bye.)

Oh, man. What a horrible terrible awful week. Is everyone okay? No? Me either. Is the world batshit crazy? Probably.  

Here are a few things to get you through the metaphorical night.

The best banana bread ever. (I don’t use words like ‘best’ and ‘ever’ lightly, so you can trust me on this. I am also not an obedient cook - i.e.  I never do exactly what a recipe tells me, ever. Too boring. So with this one, I throw in chopped apples or blueberries or yoghurt or sour cream or kefir or great big dollops of jam or whatever else floats my boat, and the result is ALWAYS amazing. This banana bread is bulletproof. I also put sea salt and brown turbinado sugar on top before baking because, well, everything tastes better with extra salt and sugar.) 

The best vanilla cake ever. (I’m slightly more obedient with this recipe, but still mess with the number of eggs, or add coconut flakes or almonds meal, for fun.)

Pretty damn good chocolate chip cookies. (See? I didn’t say ‘best’ or ‘ever’ because that would be a lie. But they’re pretty damn good. Actually, cookies and I have a mixed relationship. Sometimes I just think they’re too crunchy and tiring.)

If you’re pregnant, you only need to wear Cos and Topshop Maternity. I love those posh brands but dude, I wouldn’t spend $250 on a freaking t-shirt dress that I’ll wear for a decade, let alone one that I’m only going to wear for nine pathetic months and then HATE the sight of immediately afterwards. (No, I’m not knocked up. This is just something that I often think about. When someone I know gets pregnant I text them ‘Cos! Topshop!’ and they reply ‘oh i’ll just wear my own clothes as long as possible, I don’t think I’ll get very big’ and then I laugh so hard I walk into a wall. Then they text four and a half months later ‘I am HUGE’ and I reply ‘Cos! Topshop! And you’re not huge. You’re just pregnant. But you still deserve to look nice and feel pretty.’)

The only game I ever play on my phone is WordWarp. It is basically Tetris-level technology (millennials, Tetris is the caveman version of the entire Internet), and I only ever bother to get the six-letter word, because I’m writing out ‘tap’ ‘map’ ‘rap’ ‘tarp’ etc is a waste of my valuable time. 

When you have a newborn, get this. It will save your life.

I don’t know this woman, but her advice columns are BRILLIANT. 

If you get really bad stomach pains and/or bloated after eating certain foods but can’t figure out what or why, look into Fodmaps. It’s probably not dairy or wheat that’s bothering you, it’s probably the polyols: watermelon and peaches and onions. Those things are total bastards.  

Watch this movie and this movie and this movie and this movie and this movie and this movie and this movie and this movie and this movie and you will feel better about the world, which is very important this week. And hug someone. Hugging is even more important. 

Did you guys watch UnReal last season? Because it’s fucking epic.

Here’s a good summary.

Here’s a good preview of next season.

And this one I’m just including because, I love it.