Ruminating on the priorly expressed camp dilemma

Thank you all for your comments on my last entry.  I want you to bear in mind that I do appreciate them, despite whatever else I may say.  You should also know that I just went and re-read them, and I'm reacting much more positively toward them; but this is based off an earlier reading, which stewed and led to a big bout of introspection.

I really should have disabled comments before I posted that damn thing.  Here's the deal: I know you meant well, but I don't take criticism well.  Sure, I can pretend to take it well, but in actuality even slight criticism elicits a seething defensiveness inside my head.  I get ridiculously steamed.  It's a flaw I'm working on, with middling success - hard to take constructive criticism, even from yourself, when it pisses you off.

What's that you say?  You weren't critical?  We-e-e-ell.... yes.  It's true, you weren't.  I know this intellectually.  That being said, the comments, to my diseased mind, lightly imply a lack of perspective on my part.  And my diseased mind further extrapolates that to criticism.  And then my panties spontaneously bunch.  Like I said, middling success.

Anyway, clarifying: the problem I mentioned yesterday is not a question of making things work together harmoniously, or of a fictive exclusive choice between options.  Y'all seem to think I meant that, and I blame it on the verb mesh.  In fact, it's a question of timing and scheduling.  It's just shitty timing, really.  No, not everything has to happen right this second, but right now I'm in a little bit of limbo, not even knowing where I am next year and the years after, so it's a mite stressful.  I'm also feeling a little bit like I'm betraying myself, like I'm in danger of abandoning a writing dream, which really upsets me.

I'm flighty.  I know I am.  I rely more on emotion than on logic and reason in my decision-making progress, I always have.  There is an inherent danger in this: I run the risk of latching onto the new and interesting rather than the deep and enduring.  Luckily, I've got enough practicality/healthy sense of self-preservation to enforce a sort of waiting period in which to discern which category my newest idea belongs in.  And in the end, it's an acceptable risk, because I think I do better with this sort of thought.  Although I always think of practicalities, my emotional response to my environment is very important.  Also, without getting all spiritual-weird, I think I'm more open this way to an understanding of what my 'calling' is, and that's important to me.

Going at this from a different angle, let me just respond a bit to various ideas that have been floated to me both in comments and in IM chats.  First off, I don't, at least at this point, wish to do anything with a writing camp.  Maybe I might get interested in it at some point, but it doesn't really strike me as something I want to do.  A writing component in a more generalist camp perhaps.  Really, though, if my pipe dreams were coming true I'd be getting my MFA, then working on site at a camp (as a ranger?  director?) and writing *not* as a part of my job.

Second, it's been suggested that there are camps that might be nearer to wherever I end up next year.  This is true, there are.  However, for the moment at least I am quite committed to Camp Bon Coeur.  No matter where I end up next year, I fully intend to come back to Louisiana to work camp.  People come from Ohio, New York, and New Jersey to do so, not to mention Scotland and Germany -- surely I can too.  The main difficulty is that I don't want to be just a counselor/instructor, I want to become more involved in planning and development (which is the course I'm currently on)-- that's hard enough from an hour away in Baton Rouge, yet more so out-of-state.

A final note here: we would desperately love to have our own facility, instead of renting.  This is way out of reach for us.  Luke, Andrea, and I sat around on Tuesday night plotting to marry old rich people Anna Nicole Smith-style, and we even sent a video to that show Ty Pennington does, although the project's WAY bigger than anything they've ever done.  Seriously, we're thinking so far outside the box we can't see it anymore.  In all honesty it was more joking that anything else, but the sentiment's real.  So, on the extreme off-chance that someone knows of an individual or company that's trying to find a worthy recipient for a generous donation, you can inform them of our camp.  We're very professional, we do a world of good for our campers, and we can guarantee that the money would be well-spent.  Just so you know.  It's either that or sell ourselves into indentured servitude, probably to an oil company.

My God, I've become New England

I'm sitting here on my bed reading blogs, wearing boxers and a long-sleeved T-shirt.  Somehow this feels very New England to me.  IT's not the boxers as such, nor the long-sleeved T-shirt, it's more of the short-bottoms-plus-long-top combination.  It's always felt like an upper-class Yankee thing to me, all crab cakes at the Hyannisport Club with Buffy and Sport Jr. and did we remember to pack the extra pairs of sandals and light sweaters for our trip to the French Midi this weekend?  I'm weird, I know.

My mommy bought me shirts!  Heh.  There was a package waiting for me when I got home from the conference; Mom had gone to Beall's during a sale and bought me 5 dress shirts for under $10 apiece. I had mentioned that I might have to *gasp* invest in slightly more grown-up clothing, since it's not terribly professional to show up to teach in cargo shorts and some Tshirt I got for free eons ago, so I guess she decided to take matters into her own hands.  She knows me pretty well, actually: she stuck with the dark, rich colors.  Only misstep was a maroon light sweater with strange texturing, not to mention a total lack of proper fit.  Now I just need to come up with some pants I like, since I pretty much despise every pair of them that I own, jeans excepted.

Kregg came in just now to complain further about hair in the bathroom.  This, after he knocked on the bathroom door during my shower, necessitating me shutting off the water entirely to be able to hear him, just to tell me to PLEASE wipe out the bathtub.  I realized when he said that that I had forgotten to do so yesterday, having been out of the routine for a few days, which is my bad, but... timing?  Now, though, we have apparently expanded our madness to include all surfaces in the bathroom, which are apparently covered in my filthy hu-man hair.  "Like, your towel hangs over the toilet, so whatever falls off it ends up on the back of the toilet."  I pointed out, pointedly, the liberal coating on the entire sink area of small hairs from his clippers, which frankly is rather grosser than hair in the tub.  I'm not putting things in my eyes from the tub area, nor am I sticking my face down to within centimeters of the tub to see myriad trimmings pasted to the faucet like panko crumbs on coconut shrimp.  We agreed to both work at it.  I still think the hair obsession (with blind eye to other cleanliness markers, like the endemic soap scum) is symptomatic of serious mental skewedness, but I'm going with it to prevent major altercations.  Right here, though, among friends, I'd like to say: I am a hairy motherfucker.  I shed.  Deal.  It's not like I collect it and sprinkle it on your pillow like some kind of hair fairy.

Also, while I'm bitching?  Dear vapid blonde chicks in the driveway two houses down at 3:30 in the morning last night, what the fuck is wrong with you?  I shouldn't have to put on clothes, exit my house, walk down the street, and tell you to turn down the music from the car that's been idling in the driveway for an hour or so, because the bass is coming across loud and clear enough that I can't read, much less sleep.  And in the unfortunate event that this should become necessary, the appropriate response from the girl sitting in the front seat is not "This isn't my car."  I give a fuck, seriously.  Turn down the music, or even better, go home!  Go to bed!  It's 3:30 on a Thursday night, and you're in a neighborhood with families!  Don't you have anything to do tomorrow?  And if you don't, did you miss out on those years in childhood when you were supposed to have learned basic social skills and respect for others?  I really don't get it.  Next time I'm not even getting out of bed, I'm just reaching over to my cell phone and mentioning a noise violation to the police.  Maybe a visit from somebody in a uniform will knock some sense into your idiot heads.

Christ, I need to actually do something productive today.  First thing's first: food.  I have none, and have eaten none.  This is not a good recipe for shit-getting-done-ness.