Me and camp, the love affair is over.
Thanks everyone for all the help with my article! You might see your suggestions in the column, I can’t really remember which ones I picked now. I was so deliriously sick while writing it that I had a hard time even reading back what I’d written. Not fun.
So yeah, still very sick which is upsetting since the Camp-Out is tomorrow. I’m going hell or high-water, but I really wish I was feeling better. It’s a small group at least, but I’m one of 3 adult leaders, so I do actually need to be on my game. Plus yay, camping! Haven’t done that in years. I think it’ll be fun. And it’s cool that Brendan asked me to be an adult volunteer, I’ve never been an ‘adult’ in charge of anything. Plus it was a nice juxtaposition with camp, they screwed me out of being a leader, Brendan actually sought me out to be a leader. It’s a much nicer feeling.
I was laying in bed thinking about camp and how much the whole thing sucked. I know it’s been almost a month, but I was pretty quiet about everything that happened leading up to it and during, I told people but I didn’t really write it down. I don’t want to go next year. The whole time while I was there I kept thinking “this blows, but next year will be better” but it probably won’t. I’m not one of the favourites anymore, who knows why, but I don’t have the same cache with Kris and Sarah that I used to. Those spots lie with Bart and Helen and John, etc now. I don’t know why, I did everything they asked and worked harder than anybody else over the last few years but whatever, I lost something to them.
I wouldn’t mind if it was brand new people, in fact that’s what camp should be, making new participants stronger. But it’s not. It’s a little club for Sarah, Marshall, Kris and whichever youth they pick for faves. There’s no role for me there anymore. And even if they would have me be a leader next year, who am I to keep taking that spot? It’s really not fair of those of us who do it every year, there are only a few spots and if it truly is a ‘leadership’ camp, those spots need to be filled by new people using what they’ve learned. The old guard isn’t learning anything anymore.
And I have to say it, there is some impropriety there. We all know the rumours about a certain adult with certain likings, but I do my best to just ignore that. But there’s another adult who shouldn’t be having their house sat by a youth or offering him liquor, that’s not right. And pod leaders shouldn’t be allowed to stay up until 2am or have different privileges, they never did in the past years. And the rumours that certain Edmonton youth were denied registration because of their connections, that’s pretty shitty too.
It would be weird, knowing camp was going on and not being a part of it. But maybe I can just get involved somewhere else. Like at the BC camp. However, if the facilitators here have anything to do with who gets sent, they might screw me out of that too. It’s amazing how something that was really and truly the highlight of my year, the thing I constantly gained press for and spoke about, was assigned spokesperson really! How now it’s this thing that causes frustration and pain. This tends to happen with the groups I love. Homo House, TRUE, now camp, eventually it all comes falling down.
Maybe this sounds like sour grapes because I got ignored and promised things that never happened. And that certainly did piss me off. But things were so, so different this year and it seemed to me that the people who had fun were mostly the newbies and not the people who had been there before and knew how things had worked when they’d worked properly. It certainly wasn’t just me having problems this year, when I started talking about it, it flowed from everyone else too. The pod I was in actively tried to get together to do something about it, things were going so wrong. Without back-up though, we failed. And I tried to talk to them so many times before camp and got COMPLETELY IGNORED if it wasn’t something they felt like answering (but replied within minutes if it was) to know that trying to raise any of these concerns would be a waste of breath.
With the demise of the Bennett Centre Annex, I think so goes my involvement with camp. And that makes me very sad.
So yeah, still very sick which is upsetting since the Camp-Out is tomorrow. I’m going hell or high-water, but I really wish I was feeling better. It’s a small group at least, but I’m one of 3 adult leaders, so I do actually need to be on my game. Plus yay, camping! Haven’t done that in years. I think it’ll be fun. And it’s cool that Brendan asked me to be an adult volunteer, I’ve never been an ‘adult’ in charge of anything. Plus it was a nice juxtaposition with camp, they screwed me out of being a leader, Brendan actually sought me out to be a leader. It’s a much nicer feeling.
I was laying in bed thinking about camp and how much the whole thing sucked. I know it’s been almost a month, but I was pretty quiet about everything that happened leading up to it and during, I told people but I didn’t really write it down. I don’t want to go next year. The whole time while I was there I kept thinking “this blows, but next year will be better” but it probably won’t. I’m not one of the favourites anymore, who knows why, but I don’t have the same cache with Kris and Sarah that I used to. Those spots lie with Bart and Helen and John, etc now. I don’t know why, I did everything they asked and worked harder than anybody else over the last few years but whatever, I lost something to them.
I wouldn’t mind if it was brand new people, in fact that’s what camp should be, making new participants stronger. But it’s not. It’s a little club for Sarah, Marshall, Kris and whichever youth they pick for faves. There’s no role for me there anymore. And even if they would have me be a leader next year, who am I to keep taking that spot? It’s really not fair of those of us who do it every year, there are only a few spots and if it truly is a ‘leadership’ camp, those spots need to be filled by new people using what they’ve learned. The old guard isn’t learning anything anymore.
And I have to say it, there is some impropriety there. We all know the rumours about a certain adult with certain likings, but I do my best to just ignore that. But there’s another adult who shouldn’t be having their house sat by a youth or offering him liquor, that’s not right. And pod leaders shouldn’t be allowed to stay up until 2am or have different privileges, they never did in the past years. And the rumours that certain Edmonton youth were denied registration because of their connections, that’s pretty shitty too.
It would be weird, knowing camp was going on and not being a part of it. But maybe I can just get involved somewhere else. Like at the BC camp. However, if the facilitators here have anything to do with who gets sent, they might screw me out of that too. It’s amazing how something that was really and truly the highlight of my year, the thing I constantly gained press for and spoke about, was assigned spokesperson really! How now it’s this thing that causes frustration and pain. This tends to happen with the groups I love. Homo House, TRUE, now camp, eventually it all comes falling down.
Maybe this sounds like sour grapes because I got ignored and promised things that never happened. And that certainly did piss me off. But things were so, so different this year and it seemed to me that the people who had fun were mostly the newbies and not the people who had been there before and knew how things had worked when they’d worked properly. It certainly wasn’t just me having problems this year, when I started talking about it, it flowed from everyone else too. The pod I was in actively tried to get together to do something about it, things were going so wrong. Without back-up though, we failed. And I tried to talk to them so many times before camp and got COMPLETELY IGNORED if it wasn’t something they felt like answering (but replied within minutes if it was) to know that trying to raise any of these concerns would be a waste of breath.
With the demise of the Bennett Centre Annex, I think so goes my involvement with camp. And that makes me very sad.