(no subject)

I am sitting in the croom to write my words and that is Pretty Exciting!

The "croom" is the "crew room" at Pinewoods camp. I am, for the first time, volunteering at Pinewoods! This is exciting for all sorts of reasons. I like that I will get to spend a couple weeks with a bunch of my crew-buddies, all of whom I adore. I like that I will get a chance to experience some totally different sessions than I've attended before¹. I like that I am getting to see parts of camp I've never seen before (both literally and metaphorically). I really like that I am going to get to, as I put it to Erika, be kindof a himbo for a couple weeks (I pick things up, I do as I'm told.)

I am also weirdly anxious about the whole thing. Like, I know it will go brilliantly well, and actually arriving at camp and seeing people has gone a long way towards helping me be less anxious. My stupidest anxiety was that no one would like me --I already know like two thirds of crew, and I know for a fact that they are universally fond of me (as I am of them, it's good people what choose to work at camp).

I am still anxious about all the things I don't know, all the little in-jokes and traditions, but all the...things from different sessions? Did you know that ESC and Scottish are the only sessions that have last-night parties in Pinecones? Everyone else has last night parties in other places (tonight was camphouse). I was quipping earlier to some of the crew "how am I supposed to wake up without bagpipes". Anyways, I am excited to be around a little bit at Harmony and English weeks, but also aaaah!

I am also anxious about being here as A Scottish Dancer, because...I...am not positive the Scots have the best possible reputation at camp. I mean, to be fair, I sorta feel that every session has its own pretensions and snobbishness, but man, the Scots are...complicated. We're boisterous and enthusiastic and grand but also we're so behind on the gender conversation and we can be so painfully insular sometimes. Having been on various committees, it drives me up a wall the things people say about crew sometimes, and the way we think they don't belong at our Pinewoods sessions because ~they're not Scottish dancers~ even though most of them are phenomonal all-around dancers!

(I was fishing for reassurance from a frequently-crew-but-not-currently friend and they were being very kind about specifically that, about the fact that I have actually done a fair amount to repair and create bridges between the Scots and crew. I am always down for it! I adore teaching this thing I love to people I like.)

Mostly it's just weird for me to be anxious, but I suppose not actually surprising --I don't do anxious very often, but I do get concerned by new experiences as do us all. And I think I am probably at least a little RSD-y² right now, as I settle into a new space where I _really_ want to do a good job and am pre-emptively panicking about...not. It's absurd! I am competent and capable and will do just fine at cleaning toilets and checking cabins and running laundry and fetching mail and whatever else they want me to do! But I am still irrationally worried that I will somehow do a Terrible Job and Everyone Will Hate Me

(Especially irritating because I can do the talkdown here and the actual bad outcome is "I do a terrible job and get re-taught and have to do it again, and then we're good". That's not actually that bad an outcome! It's like how earlier I was anxious about getting to the train on time, but the failure mode of "oh no I missed the train" was "I literally just get on the next train and text Erika that I'll be an hour later".)

Anyways, it is very late and I have my first day of work tomorrow! Huzzah! I'm gonna go to bed and sleep barely under any covers because it is Very Warm and find my camp happily ever after. I hope you find things that you can feel capable and happy about!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: I have attended Scottish for every year since 2011 except this one, and ESCape for every year it's happened, and a handful of work weekends over the years. I also went to the LCFD weekend this year, but I'm not sure that counts in the same way because it was the first time all around.

2: Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is an ADHD thing linked to perfectionism and fear of doing a Bad Job. It's an irrational fear of real or perceived rejection. I have had periods of time when it is better and worse.

(no subject)

I survived my first day of Crewing!

Dear anxiety: Fuck off, everything is fine, you are perfectly capable of doing stuff. People like you. It's all great.

(Something that is _definitely_ helping me with this is already knowing a bunch of people on crew, and critically, knowing who will be real both friendly and helpful. Part of that is also knowing who on crew is some variety of neurospicy, because it's a lot easier to say "I don't know what to do here, can you help?" and feel like I'm not going to be judged.)

Anyways, first day has involved A FULL DAY SHIFT FUCK YEAH! My schedule today looked something like this:

0715: Roll out of bed, wander down the little hill to the pond, strip off my pyjamas, swim a bit, come back up the little hill in my towel, go to the cabin and get dressed

0730: Go to the croom, realize no one on crew is remotely around, and no one wakes up before the breakfast bell unless they're on breakfast duty. Go back to the dock and read a chapter of my book

0745: Breakfast, have a splendid conversation with an outgoing camper about teaching! Breakfast was bagels, which I have _never had_ at Pinewoods before. Very exciting!

0900: REPORTING FOR DUTY BOSS! I got sent on a Bathroom Run! Which means I followed SamO around some bathrooms and helped clean them and mostly learned how to clean them for all the other days I'm here.

1000: More duty! SamO and I went and did a Cabin Check --we did the first cabin together and then split up. This would've been real simple but then it was...

1100: FIRE ALARM HELL FIGURING OUT! Please stop being broken. Also some degree of me figuring out how to get in contact with my boss when I have confusions about fire alarm hell. (For reference, a major part of checking the cabins on changeover day is testing the fire alarms, because it's important to make sure those work in any context, but especially when you are in the woods.

1200: Okay we figured it out. More cabin checks! Where the hell is Royton? I ask Lisa Greenleaf, because of course she's just hanging out here, and she points me in the correct direction. Goal by the end of the two weeks: Know where all the cabins are and the names of all the bathrooms (that latter is way more exciting to me because it took me like eight years of coming to Pinewoods to even accept that people actually use the names regularly. So that's a goal. Learn bathroom names!)

1245: Lunch is in fifteen minutes and that's not enough time to do more cabin checks. Time to strip off and go fall in the pond for a mo'! Also get a clean t-shirt! Then I go eat lunch and get to read session evals from the session I mostly just missed. It was neat to see those from the opposite side (and occasionally ridiculous).

1330: MEETING NUMBER ONE! Woo thank you Chris
1345: MEETING NUMBER TWO! Woo, thank you boss (Fiona!)

1400: Time for afternoon work! Finish the last of the cabin checks (about fifteen minutes before campers arrive, yay!)

1445: YOU NEED TARPS FOLDED?! PLEASE DON'T LET OTHER PEOPLE DO THIS I CAN BE IN CHARGE OF FOLDING TARPS REAL GOOD (oh god I better be good or my mother will kill me) (when mom became Shedmaster at girl scout camp, among other things, she canonfied the way to fold tarps and then used sharpies to mark every tarp at camp to inspire other people to correctly fold it.

1530(?): Also I am going to walk around camp and check in on all the AEDs because we're running low on tasks that need doing, and I impressed Fiona by successfully identifying 3/4 of the locations from memory.

1600: I got to see Myles! And all four AED locations! We're basically done for the day, just need to run the laundry along.

1645: Laundry is run and I spent the rest of the afternoon fucking around and chatting with people. We're done with work!

I went for another swim and I chatted with crew + Linden's mom (she brought us excellent bread and cheese!) and took my 24hr covid test (also negative) and ate dinner and ate three pieces of vegan chocolate cake (+ a fourth leftover just now) and took a much needed nap and started to go to the dance and then there were four minor crises all at once and Lucretia and I went to take the towels off the line and put them in the dryer (rather than get soaked by the thunderstorm).

I did not make it to the dance because we returned to the croom and I just...hung out with everyone. It was a nice evening! There was gossip and card games (I played Egyptian Ratscrew for the first time since like...high school) and cheetohs and Good Company.

Now it is late (lol, it's not even midnight, wtf Kat?) and I am going to brush my teeth and head to bed. Goodnight!

~Sor
MOOP!