Not a happy camper

An update on the handing-out-home-baked-cookies-on-the-market-incident. Honestly, I felt like a fraud. It was these happy brigade womens passion; they did loads more volunteerwork with the disabled, fundraisers and other good causes. I ignore charity-donation-workers in the shoppingstreet (it's better for all parties to leave me alone on a saturday when I come out of the H&M) and lie to people going door to door for money, saying that I already sponsor the other charity involved with children, animals, fill in any random disease. Although I do donate to the WWF and buy Pink Ribbon Magazine, hell, I even took pictures of my naked boobs and posted them on the Viva-website for breastcancer. But this was something else...
For some reason people think you want to poison them if you just give them the cookies. For fun. To make them smile. Without any marketing trick. They are not used to it anymore, which is quite sad when you think about it. So they end up shaking their head and ignoring me with my biscuit-tin and hawaii-necklace. I actually found it difficult to walk up to people and offer them my glazed biscuits, to my own surprise. In total it was a good thing, it did make people happy (just not me as much as I'd hoped) and I have learned that trying to make people happy costs a lot of energy. The most heard comment was: 'no, thank you'. Which pleased me a lot, because people obviously still say thank you.
Within an hour or so, we got through our stash of heart-shaped cookies, sweets, waffles and cakes and I was frozen. One of the women suggested to get some more, and I swear I could have killed her. Not a very optimistic, happy respons, I know. I just wanted to sit down somewhere, warm up and drink hot chocolate with whipped cream. And I have to say, I might not be optimistic, but I am persuasive, because within 10 minutes we were packed up and ready to get out of there.

Happy camper

I am not a natural optimist (soothing and consoling, yes, optimistic, no). For most of you, this will not come as a surprise.
I am intense (Reno).
I eat too much chocolate (Rob).
I am rude to clients (my current colleagues).
I am nice, but not as nice as my mother (Pieter).
I am caring (just like his mother; Teun).
But that's just other people's opinions, although the second one is probably true. And needless to say the last one didn't get much further than one coffee-date. I know I'm a lot to take in, and there has been a manual available on how to deal with me at Lowlands (ask Tanja) since 2006. Apart from priding myself with a good sense of humour, I congratulate myself with a fine taste in music. Maybe add drama-queen to that list (and plenty of other qualities that make me worth my while).
The psychological test I had to take for my job pointed out that I have a more than average inclination for depression. I knew that, but combine it with what I see at work everyday it's lethal combination ending up in pessimism. Although I prefer to call myself a realist, who always has a Plan B ready (B stands for backup, people).
But now a friend of ours is diagnosed with a braintumour and he needs all the positive thoughts he can get (next to surgery). My realism; "baby, it's a braintumour, not a splinter, he could die", makes my best friend cry, and we can't have that. So in order to practice some altruistic, happy, over-the-top-optimism, I am going to hand out heart-shaped-home-made cookies on the Rotterdam market tomorrow morning. Not by myself, oh no, there's actual groups doing this. For fun. I feel like I'm Wednesday Addams going to Camp Chippewa, but I'm pretty sure the 'blije brigade' (happy brigade) will be gentle with me, opti-virgo.


Yes, I spent my friday night baking. Ah well, I found myself drinking bottled water and munching on carrots last saturdaynight behind the till at Bazar Curieux, so it's progress.

This one is for Wouter (aka Walter Walletshaker).
To be continued...