Last minute preparations for Camp

I'm getting ready to leave for Pine Mountain Settlement School for Reading Camp 2007.... and there has been a whirlwind of things to do for me to get ready to leave.

Mostly I'm annoyed at myself for being irresponsible with money, and disgusted at how quickly I am able to deplete my bank account. It's not all my fault, though, because different places of employment have yet to pay me, and that makes it considerably difficult to pay the rent, fix the car, buy food, pay for gas (I want a hybrid), and pay credit card bills, which continue to suck the life right out of my very soul. I've just paid off one credit card, and I have one more to go, thank God. The minute a much-anticipated paycheck arrives in the mail, that credit card balance will go to $0 as well. All I can do now is wait and watch the interest increase my monthly payments.

I'm very glad to be going to camp right now, though it's not the same uncontrollable enthusiasm that it usually is. Maybe that will come when I hit KY-52. We'll see. I'm looking forward to the week, though, because maybe I'll be able to sit down and force myself to write again. My writing has finally become somewhat interesting, at least to me, and so onward I go, trying to write things that might bridge the gap from meaningful to me to meaningful in general. Sometimes I write some pretty insightful things, and then I go back a few months later and I'm pleasantly surprised to find that I might actually know something about life.

That's part of my interest in going to camp and dealing with adults, I guess. I am 20, I am young. Ok. that's out of the way. Be that as it may, I know something about what it means to live. I've had quite an interesting past that very few people know about, I've traveled, I've experienced, I've held positions of leadership, and I am not stupid. I'm ignorant of many things, but motivated to change that. So Reading Camp will be interesting, because I'll deal with adults who think they know what they're talking about and what they're doing, but in my 20-year-old "I know everything" stage, I will think they have a lot yet to learn. And I'll be in a position of "authority" with my mother and my aunt in positions under me. That's interesting. My mom has seen me in this type of role before, but she's never had to look to me for guidance and direction. My aunt has never seen me in this role..... hasn't really seen me in any role, for that matter. The last she saw me I was 12, and obviously things have since changed.

And lots of adults, especially the teachers, have been in positions of authority over young people for decades, and yet they're embarking on something entirely new. Reading Camp is not school. Reading Camp is a community characterized by a hierarchy based on seniority. The hierarchy isn't pompous, arrogant, or impossible..... it's just that people who have done reading camp for 6 years (even if they're 20 years old) know better, generally, how to do things than people who've just joined the game. And so, it's hard for type-A personality volunteers to forgo their desires and ideas and let the seasoned veterans do the job. But then it's also a challenge for the Reading Camp veterans to let go of some time-tested ways of doing things and allow new ideas to enliven and enrich the camp experience. Reading Camp is an interesting enterprise, a constant give and take between old and young, old and new, the way things were, the ways things are, and the way things should be.

Off I go to camp, for the 12th consecutive summer of my young (I think I know everything!) life.