Colorado

Its really cool when you feel like you are somewhere you were meant to be. This is going to be a really great summer.

First time on a plane too.

This is not butterflies, I want to puke.
Somehow it all seems unreal, spur of the moment, even though it is truly all I have been thinking about since I got the job back in February. I want to scream, celebrate, jump up and down. It is amazing to think that tomorrow morning, not afternoon, but early morning I will be stepping off of a plane in Colorado, not just Colorado but Pikes National forest at the base of Pikes peak, at an elevation of over 8,000 feet. The only thing that keeps the excitement in check, is the crippling terror. I stopped to think about it and realized I will not know a single person working at this camp and will only know two people in the entire state. I am good at making friends but it is still a little bit scary, I mean I have never tried to make a friend from Colorado. What if they don't like me? What if they hate me? Or worse what if they think I am to city for them? I am not insecure but I am definitely awkward in high pressure situations where I do not know anyone. It is just silly little first day jitters spiraling out of control, because I know this will undoubtedly be the best summer of my entire life so far.

Its the end of the world as we know it?

Oh wait again?
Religion and its scare tactics never cease to amaze me. Let the sinners, sin its a really good time and all saved people really are, are sinners that found an imaginary scape goat. If you ask me the world be a much better when its left behind for the damned. Really though the end is near? Ahahaha like anything can end, and if it could the end would have nothing to do with the fate of planet earth. Four Hundred billion billion!

What if?

That moment when you finally start taking action that allows you to live your life the way you want to live your life, is fucking indescribable. I am going to Colorado in seven days, seven fucking days! It took me almost twenty years to go to Colorado and I am finally doing it! When I get back from Colorado I am going to jump out of a fucking plane! Then I am going to the only place that I feel a sense of belonging large enough to call home, and when I get there, Oh when I get there! I am going to have a few weeks to hike, jump off cliffs, and just live it up before I start back on my studies and take the first class for my outdoor rec minor. Thats right this kid finally got the nerve to take outdoor rec. And I know my future goals change a lot from time to time, but when I tell any variation of them to people they laugh, and I laugh along. It is a little bit sad that when other people hear of my future plans they take it as a joke, but until now it was really nothing more. So I am going to go ahead and let them laugh, because they are way to sure of themselves, they have convinced themselves they are headed down the right path, headed for ultimate success, they lack my conerstone, they lack flexibility. They are all to heavily invested in something that can never be a sure thing, for the future is always an unknown, life is about the present! So, what if? Then I will just do something else. How about you?

Two rescue breaths

The human race has long thought of itself ignorantly as the ultimate goal of evolution, as the top of the food chain, the masters of the earth, of the cosmos even. What the humans have long overlooked was the race that towers above them, while living in the very same neighborhoods, for most of the year, effortlessly blending into the crowd, utterly indistinguishable. Yet, this very similar race answers to a higher calling, or perhaps suffers from a rare disorder, and along with the turn of the seasons they make themselves know for three long months. These are what we classify as camp counselors, a both psychologically and physically impossible entity. While relatively hard to spot for most of the year when the days begin to lengthen in the summer months they show themselves. You will notice generally sane and mostly well dressed people disappearing from your neighborhood, do not be alarmed they are not being hurt, they are gathering, you may not see them again until the fall. They are going to spend the summer months acting as a rare unnaturally occurring combination of a judge, doctor, coach, entertainer, and most of all friend. They are out on an impossible mission to undue ten years of damage in just six days. These ordinary people in your neighborhood, these average Joes and Janes, are in fact anything but ordinary. They are super heroes, unbathed kneeling in mud with a questionable case of what appears to be poison ivy, lungs filled with woodsmoke, and a genuine unwavering smile, trying indefinitely to start a campfire in a downpour, because they promised their campers s'mores.
You may wonder why anyone would do such a thing, but long have scholars pondered the very same question to no avail. The money is surely not what drives these creatures into the woods for a summer free of rest or relaxation. For at the end of the summer the average counselor has saved enough to buy one college textbook, a pair of new shoes to replace the pair mangled in the name of adventure, a new package of socks for the same reason, and enough gas to get back to campus.
After hearing this you may feel compelled to ask if any of it is really worth it. But then you would never be able to truly understand. I can try to describe to you why they do what they do, but until you are there until you see it, you will never truly understand. A camp counselor is, for lack of a more perfect word, worshiped by the campers they receive, but this is not why they do it, they are not at all conceited. They do it, all of it, for pickup day, the day at the end of the week when the campers return to your neighborhoods, different, confident. You see, the counselors remember how the campers came to them, some were silent, some may have even been screaming, crying, latched to their parents legs with a death grip. They came terrified and shy, unsure of themselves, ignorant of their true potential. In just six days of unmatched enthusiasm and effort, they leave smiling, joyous, promising to stay in touch forever, bragging about how they walked off the zip platform, the campers are glowing, they are confident, they are unstoppable. This is why the counselors do it, this is what makes them tick, keeps them going, it was never the coffee. To know they have made an impact in the life of child is worth never getting eight hours of sleep, missing out on the summer blockbusters, vacations, and all the other minor inconveniences that go along with the job.
Next time you find yourself in a Wal~mart and you see a rather rushed looking twenty some year old with a cart full of saran wrap, water balloons, and a single candy bar dressed in tye dye, arms strewn with friendship bracelets, muddy untied tennis shoes, and perhaps a questionable smell, take a second to think of how their day has gone so far. Three skinned knees, a bloody nose, five homesick campers, a bee sting, one lost bathing suit, countless "unbearable" mosquito bites, and thirty individual friendship bracelet making lessons to ten people; then look at your watch notice that it is only one o' clock, and realize you are standing next what can only be described as a super hero working each and everyday to change the world.

Cynicism tastes great

Your childhood was a lieAnd if you remember it you are a liar.

Pardon me

Since when is it a bad thing to be excited about how great your life is going?

Marquette

I want to be sitting in the sand on the Northcoast of America with a beer in my hand and the sun on my face surrounded by the people I love who are always there for me.
I want my day to start at 11am and not end until 5am.
I want to start my day at the beach, go a million different directions, and end at the beach.
I want my friends who will do anything at anytime.
I want to hear "Its late, but I dont care."
I want to be called a loser for going home before 3am.
I want sober hugs, but not as much as I want drunk hugs.
I want to go dance, sing, yell, jump, run.
I want to go to a party and address everyone by "bro," to see who catches on.
I want to drink alchol out of water bottle in the middle of town.
I want to spend all day with kerchak.
I want to climb sugarloaf, mount marquette, and hogsback all in one day.
I want to fall through the ice at whetmore.
I want to run the lakeshore, the rivers edge, and through the old growth.
I want to laugh until someone pukes and then laugh at that.
I want to sit around a TV with no cable and just talk.
I want to do something different everyday.
I want evey gathering I am at to slowly evolve into an epic night.
I want to go for "a walk" that lasts the entire night.
I want my city,
I want my friends,
I want my way of life,
I want to go home.

Fuck you Flint.

I am not even going to complain about this anymore, it bothers me how much it bothers me to be here. I am being whiny and needy. No longer shall I complain about the solitude I find myself in, the lack of excitement in my life, or the dramatic sink in over all productivity I encounter when I am in Flint. I am an extrovert by nature and as such I draw all of my energy and motivation from others, but In Flint I have a lack of interaction with others, and I find myself growing uncharacteristically depressed. This is ludacris, I must not let myself rely on others for happiness, I need to learn to enjoy introvertedness beyond my morning jog. It is with this that I pledge to no longer sit and wait for or reach out repeadtely to others as a means to feel less alone while I am here. Instead I will teach myself how to do things other than working out on my own. It is just for a month but I feel as though I need more experience with being truly independent, from a nonfinacial standpoint. I rarely do things other than workout, hike, bike, or sell plasma alone. I usually will not even go to econo without someone else. I would like to, in order to have a more well rounded personality start to find joy in things even when they are done alone, and what better time to do so than a time forced upon me. Fuck it, I cant even bullshit myself through a blog to be more optimistic, I will just jog more and not complain about this again. 22 days.

Twenty four days

Buying the plane ticket makes everything real.
It makes being here just transition time.
It gives me motivation.
I am going to have the best summer of my life.