A Few More Thoughts About The Fundraiser…

I should start this post with the warning, that some of it might sound like I am an ungrateful bitch. Which I want to stress: I am not! On the contrary. Deep down and overall I’m very grateful and still baffled about how this small impromptu fundraiser in honour of Sam Heughan got a life of it’s own and raised about $5.600 for Bloodwise UK in just one week. It’s amazing! Over 130 fans participated so far and a lot of fans tweeted about it or retweeted it and helped spread the word. Which was pretty cool! Very cool also was the praise I got for this idea, the feedback and many lovely messages. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Which clearly is a good thing.

But then, when the donation started to dwindle after a week, even though I spent some time promoting the fundraiser all over Twitter again, in a tiny corner of my mind a doubtful, cranky voice started speaking up. It was a similar “coming down from a high” – crash, I wrote about in the prologue in this post. Because getting positive reactions from everyone about this for quite a while was a “High”, no doubt about it. It’s nice to get praised and appreciated. And then the raised sum stalled around $5.600 and people stopped tweeting about it and…. Crash!

I KNOW people didn’t really stop caring about it. I mean, I know people still appreciate(d) the idea, even if they don’t repeatedly say it to me 24/7 :-) The question rather should be why I should feel let down once they stopped saying it (to me). It speaks volume about my sense of self, maybe? The urge to get praise / validation of my actions from someone on the outside? I don’t know. And like I said, it’s only a small voice in a tiny corner of my mind and these days I more often than not successfully shut her up.

But it still makes me wonder, why the voice speaks up in the first place. Why I give her the room to doubt me and my actions after all. So much room to conjure up ideas about what other people might think or not think of me. Which is something I can’t influence, because it’s all in their heads anyway. And I shouldn’t care that much and definitely not care about ideas conjured up in my mind…. Does that make sense? Probably not…

In the spirit of full disclosure I might add, that, of course, a part of me wanted Sam himself to notice and acknowledge the fundraiser and to be honest, acknowledge MY part in it. And then when he did, that cranky voice in the tiny corner still was not quite satisfied and was asking for more. Hey, I warned you, that I might sound like an ungrateful bitch.

Because when I take a step back and look at the fundraiser at a whole it’s still amazing. I started it on a whim, worried about not getting $800 together within 4 weeks. Less than a week later over 130 fans raised 7x as much money for Bloodwise. SEVEN TIMES! And among the thousands of tweets directed at Sam each day, he did see and replied to one about the fundraiser. (Richard Rankin replied to a tweet of mine the same day, by the way, which might make the day one my favourite in my Twitter history, but that’s another story *g*).

Anyway, I didn’t start the whole fundraiser with the “Oh, this will get me into Sam’s good graces” intention. Not at all. I honestly didn’t think about that when I started it. I just wanted to DO something to channel my own frustration about his Golden Globe snub. And remembering that and remembering all the lovely messages I received from other fans and from Bloodwise UK themselves about the fundraiser usually helps to shut up the voice in the corner.

And it makes me remember that I created something positive here which according to the messages left on the fundraiser site, helped other people to deal with their frustration as well. Quite by chance I did something good and that’s all that matters. Right?

Maybe I should have put in a warning about sounding cocky as well ;-) ?

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