12/23/2013

Camp Earthshine

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When you attend a middle school in a hippie-littered, lesbian-abundant, obnoxiously self-satisfied city like I did, you don't go on normal school field trips. No, you go to Camp Earthshine. Yes, this is a real place and yes I really went there.

I had exactly two friends in middle school. A nerdy white boy named Matt and a nerdy Indian boy named Keeshan. They were awesome. We were awesome. And we did everything together. I mean, come on, who needs girls or parties or middle school drama when you have awesome RPG's to play on the computer?! Xenimus, anyone? So fun. We even had a shared notebook of secrets that we would pass back and forth to each other in class (it was links to porn sites, y'all, we were C-O-O-L). And when it came time for our school field trip to Camp Earthshine, of course we decided to room together. We were buds. And we were psyched.

The theme of our three day adventure at Camp Earthshine was "Destination: 1840." For the first half of the trip, we were Cherokee indians. It was like an acting exercise, so naturally, I rocked at it. I gutted a fish, I cooked said fish over a fire, I then ate said fish in a legit teepee, I threw a tomahawk, and I ground some corn. If I had been any more Cherokee, I would have been walking the trail of tears! The second half of the trip I was a pioneer, black-smithing, candle-making, and apple-cider grinding. If I had been any more pioneer, I would have been kicking the Cherokee off their land and sending them on the trail of tears! It was both educational, a little bit sad and dangerous. So naturally, I thrived. The best part of the trip, however, was the accommodations. All of the students stayed in the main lodge, which was pretty cool. That's also where we ate our meals and they would give away awards for the tables that left the least amount of food waste (hippies). The lodge, however, was not big enough to accommodate all of us. Three boys got to stay in the guest house. And you guessed it, Keeshan, Matt, and I were those lucky boys. Cherokee by day, middle school boys wreaking havoc in the guest house at night. And this wasn't just any guest house. No, it was practically Trump manor. Two stories. A spiral staircase! A KITCHEN! Just for the three of us. We stayed up late into the night swapping ghost stories, having pillow fights, and eating strange things on dares. Everything was perfect until, if I remember correctly, we got a little too rowdy and ended up punching a hole in the wall. And then we got a little hyped up on candy and broke a bunk bed. And then I got bad diarrhea because of all the candy and I think I didn't cook my fish all the way through and I definitely ate too many apples (they were free y'all!). And our teacher had to intervene.

We got in trouble, yeah. But would it have been so memorable if I hadn't gotten in trouble? Absolutely not! We were three nerdy boys allowed to let loose for the first time ever! It was our time to break shit and we did not disappoint. So if you are a parent of a nerdy, perfect teenage boy and you are trying to get them to do something wrong for a change so that they can live a little.... send them to Camp Earthshine. Stay comfy y'all!

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12/18/2013

Generation Y...OLO

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Recently, there has been a barrage of negativity toward the generation of “millenials” or “Generation Y” (essentially anyone who was born from the 80s on) - We’re lazy, they say. We have no direction in life, they say. We aren’t investing our money properly, they say. All these Generation X folks have been tossin’ some mighty shade our way. And quite frankly, it’s a damn rainforest out there. So as a hardworking millennial myself, I’d like to shed a little light on exactly what our generation is up to. I invite you all into our shoes.

First off, we weren’t necessarily dealt an all-star hand of cards, okay? We were ripped straight from the teet and thrown in a dirty pale of hay. If life were Groundhog’s Day and I was Puxatawny Phil, I would have taken one look at the economic situation and crawled right back into that hole from whence I came and stayed there until Obamacare sorted itself out (let’s pretend that metaphor worked, y’all). But I didn’t really have that luxury, did I? Nope, life keeps on truckin’ and we are all along for the ride whether we like it or not. Our generation wasn’t thrown a six-figure salary out of college, no, we were thrown an unpaid internship and a lot of unanswered emails. So what did we do with our empty wallets and our empty void of time ahead of us? We divided our focus in two directions: happiness and meaning.

Happiness: noun \ˈha-pē-nəs\ a state of well being and contentment. We are a generation that is taking control of our lives and following our happiness. I’d like to believe that the “Y” in Generation Y stands for YOLO, because we are squeezing the joy out of everything. If we are accused of anything, we should be accused of living ourselves to death. Because it isn’t about money for us. It isn’t about what other people are telling us we should do. Or what’s expected of us. It’s about memories. It’s about 5-6 decades (if we’re lucky) from now saying, “Yeah, I did it right.” #OurJesusOurJourney But when I take a look at all of my peers that are busting their asses day in and day out, struggling to make ends meet, taking unpaid internships, volunteering for time-consuming projects, working for free, just for the chance to do what we love even if only for a short time or make a difference in someone else’s life, I begin to realize that we are in it for more than just happiness. We are also looking for meaning in our lives.


Meaning:  noun \ˈmē-niŋ\ significant quality. We are a generation that is looking to make a difference in the world or in the life of someone else. We are choosing careers not based on salary or status but on the chance to change the world. To make our mark. And making a difference is not necessarily the same as being happy. Can it make others happy? Obvi. Can it be a road to eventual happiness? Sure, but the road is not an easy one. We are struggling, yes, but I feel like this journey that our generation is on is an incredible one. It isn’t a journey that should be scoffed at by generations before us but looked upon in admiration. Y’all created a generation of people that are taking chances and daring to think differently in order to change the world and our generation is fighting to make sure it changes in the right direction. And so, Generation X, riddle me this: is it a horrible thing to have an entire generation of human beings that are solely focused on making the world a more enjoyable, safer place to live? I think we can all just take a breath, let it go, and get comfy cause the millenials run da world. And what a beautiful world it will be. Stay comfy y’all.   

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