Campfyre Stories

It only took me a week to have the time to blog, but here I finally am.  I still don’t think I’ve recovered from the combination of 5 days at FRFF plus starting a new job immediately, but what are you gonna do?

I arrived at the festival on Wednesday evening, my mother and RC2 had already set up our camp, so all that was left was for Spawn to pitch his tent and set up, which he did willingly and happily.  Once that was done, we headed off to grab some food and meet up with people we hadn’t seen for a year.

The food at FRFF is always good.  At least the breakfasts and lunches are.  Dinners tend to be hard for me because, while they are all vegetarian, they often have peppers in them, and I’m allergic, so I wind up spending a lot of time at the salad bar, which is usually very well stocked.  It’s generally light fare and, in the heat and sun, that’s a very good thing.  My clothes were a little too big when I got back, I think I lost about 5-10 lbs. there.

The first night, Wednesday, is a volunteer-only day before the festival kicks off.  There’s a volunteer open mic (some are good, most are mediocre) and a lot of time spent trying to find old friends, the other early arrivers.  I found a handful – quite a few whose names I had forgotten.  my crew chief tells me (and I’ve seen this to be true) that there’s a three-year rule.  You have to see someone three years in a row before their name finally sinks in.  It’s all good, though, because all the volunteers wear name tags – so that helps.

From the moment I arrived, I found that people I didn’t know were waving at me and shouting hello.  Some of them, it turned out, were people who Spawn and I had taught Cosmic Wimpout (our standard festival game) in years past, but quite a few were just friendly folks who I hadn’t met before, so I made a point to do so and I feel like I expanded my family/community.

Whenever we all first arrive, the standard greeting is "welcome home", because it is like a second home…  it’s an alternate reality.  Mom, RC2 and I all have second families there, but they’re not the same family.  Spawn is finally starting to develop his own as well, but his tendency toward solitude at the festival keeps him from really getting into it.  Even though there are a lot of people I only see once a year, I look forward to seeing them and get really excited to catch up and find out what’s all going on with everyone.

It’s interesting to me.  I tend, in real life, to gravitate toward men.  My friends are predominantly male and my female friends (with one exception) all live far away, so we mostly talk on the phone, but at the festival, I spend time with a majority of women – most of whom are older than me.  The older than me part isn’t surprising – I tend to fit better with people a generation or so ahead of me, but it’s nice to spend time with women who are completely down-to-earth, don’t play petty competitive games and have a feisty independent streak.  It’s very comfortable and comforting.  i did find myself spending more time this year with guys my age than I have in years past.  I really connected with 2 – one who I had met years before, but who hadn’t come for a couple of years, and one who knew a creator of Cosmic Wimpout, and so we bonded over that.  It was good.

This is what the festival is for me.  While I enjoy the music and everything, I go for the people and the escape from reality.  My crew is t-shirts and our sales tent is right next to the stage, so I usually just schedule my shifts so I can listen to what I want to hear, I rarely make a point to view the concerts.  Of all the performances, the one I really look forward to is the Sunday Morning Gospel Wake Up Call.  Spiritual music on the last day of the festival is a wonderful way to start the last day.  it’s inspiring in a non-denominational way for me.  I just love gospel music anyway…  and these folks do it beautifully.

But what is a festival recap without a discussion on the weather?  Every year it rains at Falcon Ridge, but we never know if it will be light sprinkles, mostly threats or monsoons.  Since we were in a new location, we also didn’t know what the end result would be…  what a rain we got.

Friday night was grey and overcast, it rained a little then and Saturday morning, so the teen crew spread around some hay to make things less hazardous, but the threats in the sky were not going away.  Saturday afternoon the sky opened up like a monsoon and the flooding was beyond belief.  In the t-shirt tent, we wound up with several inches of water, well over our feet and the entire site was pretty bad.  The ‘accessible" camping was completely flooded, I saw several tents with water lines that reached 2-4 inches up the side.  As I headed back to our camp, I was dismayed to see a river sprung up in the road in front of our tents – it was a good 4 feet wide by about 10 feet long and the wee ones were up to their knees sending foam lily pads with frogs on them down this temporary river in races.  Imagine my relief when I checked our tent and we were not flooded at all.  Spawn, unfortunately, did not fare so well and wound up leaving Saturday night (since he had a ride who had come for the day).

The mud was thick and slippery and everywhere.  I took my shoes, wrapped them in a bag and stuck them in my pocket (even I have limits, and there, my limit was the porta potty – that was the only time I put my shoes on for the rest of the festival).  There were mired wheelchairs *everywhere* and a large majority of folks were running around barefoot.  I went and grabbed the Child of Chaos and the two of us danced off into the mud saying "squish squish" with every step and then splashing in the puddles.  I love the rain and I figure, we have two choices – we can laugh or we can cry, but neither one is going to change the situation, so why be miserable?  We weren’t.

Sunday is always the hardest day for me.  I’m burnt out, I’m sore from sleeping on the ground, I’m grimy and muddy and TIRED (since I probably average about 5 hours of sleep), so I was ready to leave pretty early.  We didn’t leave as early as I wanted, though, so I spent a lot of extra time in the hot sun, kind of dozing off or playing in the (still there) mud.

It was nice to note, this year, after coming home and taking my shower, that I was more tan than grime.  That’s an unusual occurrence for me, but I’m still a pasty white girl, less tan than a lot of people in the winter – heh.  But I know I’m tan and can see the difference.

But then I went straight to the new job and I haven’t really caught up.  I think I’m still burnt out from the festival and everything else is factoring in.

At least entry is one thing to cross off my list.  In another day or two I’ll catch up with the "in other news" kinds of things, like the man with the frogs and the Mexican…  but for now, I just want to, well, not do ANYTHING.

… and usually I do, but when promises are made repeatedly, I tend to believe they will come to pass…  This is a mistake I keep making.  I hate promises, but even more than that I hate that I allow people to convince me that they’re true…  even worse, that I come to count on them.

Falcon Ridge is, very much an escape from reality.  We have our festival lives and our real lives.  Well, coming home was real life slapping me in the face, knocking me down and giving me the finger as it left me in the dirt.  Lovely.  Welcome home.

I start the new job tomorrow and have to wake up at 6, I need to move in about a week and have no idea how or where I’m going to find an apartment.  I thought that things had turned a corner and that change was in the air, instead I came home to threats and anger from different sources.

I’m burnt out and exhausted.  I had a great time, but there’s no way I can blog about the festival until after I’ve had a chance to digest it…  and to get some sleep.

This is what my next two weeks looks like.

I have to find a new apartment and move into it.  I leave on Wednesday for my folk festival, coming back on Sunday.  I have to pack for the festival and pack up the house.  On the 24th, I start a new job (finally!). 

I’ve been needing and wanting change for some time, since I’ve been feeling rather stagnant, but I didn’t want it all at once.  Another case of not being careful for what I wished for, I guess.

Part of me feels like a fairy tale princess, since the past week has brought unexpected assistance from two very attractive men.  Knights in shining armor?  I’m not such a believer, tarnished armor, maybe.

Three days of laundry, packing and trying to find an apartment.  Five days of living in a tent and selling t-shirts to folkies.  Another week of packing and starting a new job.  I promised a friend with a new start-up business that I’d help her build her website (and let me just say, GoDaddy sucks for the hell they’re putting her, and by proxy me, through).  I have no idea how I’m going to pull all of this off, but I have faith that I will.

A friend of a friend gave me a whole bunch of clothes that she was getting rid of.  Very nice, professional clothes.  It was totally like shopping without spending any money, especially since I had to try everything on.  I’ve had a chance to reconnect with someone I was feeling was lost to me.

What’s the opposite of "When it rains, it pours"?  Or does that go both ways?  I’m leaning toward, when the sun shines, I get all kinds of burned.  Heh.

I’m exhausted just thinking about it all.

"… did you walk off with my keys?"

I’ve had to ask this question not once, but twice this week.

See, I live in a third floor walk-up, so when people I know/people I’m expecting, ring the bell, I lean out the window and drop down the keys.  They can then let themselves in and give me my keys when they come up…  except, apparently, this week.

I used to lose my keys fairly often and it’s a horrible feeling, but when you frantically search and the keys are NOT IN THE APARTMENT, it’s even worse.  So twice I’ve had to call someone and say "Um…  did you walk off with my keys in your pocket?"  And both times the answer was yes.

Thank gods they were both people I trust implicitly and talk to/see on a regular basis…  but twice in one week?  This is getting to be a bit much.

I am really good at what I do.  I learn quickly and help others to learn things I already know.  I have impeccable customer service skills and can (and have) apply them in a lot of different situations.

I have found myself disqualified for too many positions because a lot of placement agencies take superficial requirements as gospel.  Though I’ve worked in End-User support for years and worked with 3000 people on projects, because I haven’t worked with 1000 users in a Help Desk capacity I am automatically disqualified for just about every State job out there.

Outsourcing has caused most entry level positions to disappear in the US, but the outsourcing of Human Resources to placement agencies all too often means that people who are qualified for specific positions are out of the running because non-technical people are not able to look past the guidelines given to them by the hiring companies.

I wonder how many other people find themselves in my position, unable to find work because their experience is incompatible with guidelines that are read as requirements.

I interview well.  If I could GET TO THE INTERVIEWS I would have been employed by now, but because I’ve only supported 300 people in a Help Desk capacity, I can’t even get to the interviews.  I can’t even get past the forms that say "Fill in each required area.  If you don’t have the specific experience we’re looking for, you will be considered non-compliant."

I don’t know when the shift occurred, but I know that there was a time when it mattered what you could actually do and what you had done and who you were, rather than filling out a form to be considered compliant or non-compliant.  Guidelines should be just that, guidelines.

Because, you know what?  I know that I’m good at what I do.  I just need (another) chance to prove that to people.

I learned something the other day that brought up a lot of long-held resentments for me.

I’ve tried to write it down five times and I can’t make it work without getting into details, which is the last thing I want to do.

I guess I’m glad to know that the things I thought were true really are, but at the same time I think I was better off without having the confirmation.  The reality, though, leaves me angry and hurt.

She will never ask for my forgiveness.  She will never acknowledge the horrible things she did to me.  She will never tell me how she really feels and she’ll never understand that the things she blames me for didn’t hurt anyone as much as she hurt me.

I hate being angry, but I hate even more being angry when there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it…  that makes me feel helpless.

I wish I knew how to write about it.  It might not fix anything, but it would probably make me feel better.

Please discuss.

Happy Independence Day

There’s a commercial on television right now that says "40 is the new 30.  30 is the new 20."  This got me thinking and I said something about it today to my neighbor.  I’m happy being 30, I wouldn’t go back to 20 for anything.  Honestly, I wouldn’t go back at all – to any age.

My neighbor, though, who’s in his 40′s said he would go back to 16.  I was horrified by this idea, I cannot imagine any adult going back to the teen years.  Maybe he’s forgotten was 16 was like.  Maybe he’s one of those people who truly believes that high school was the best years of his life, but it boggles my mind.

It’s not even about the specific circumstances in my life at 16, it’s 16in generally.  You’re still at the height of puberty, still living at home and subject to your parents’ rules, you’re still in high school and subject to those petty games, you’re still learning how to do the mating rituals, there’s all that angst and there’s a popularity game to navigate.  No way, not me.

20 isn’t much better.  Either you’re in college or you’re working some crappy job, starting your life.  At 20 I had a two year old.  You’re STILL figuring out the mating rituals, unless you married young, and let’s not talk about the statistics on teen marriage.  You’re probably not living at home anymore, but now you have the added responsibility of trying to balance your spending with your bills and figuring out how this whole credit thing is supposed to work.

25 tends to be a year of crisis for a lot of people.  This is often the year that people figure out what they really want out of a mate, out of their career, out of life.  But these are not sudden revelations, they are the culmination of years of wading through…  of kissing frogs and answering phones and being kicked or walked all over or something else entirely – everyone has a different story.

At 30, no matter how circumstances are right now, I can’t imagine anything that could possibly change my mind, but I wouldn’t go back.  I wouldn’t want to do anything over, I can’t think of a pinpoint of time from which to clean the slate.  Not for anything.

As you may know, I am carless – by choice.

Several years ago I gave up my car, in part because it was getting too expensive, but also because it was just too much trouble.  I borrowed a car from my mother last weekend for the whole weekend and I realized that having a car stresses me out.  I feel obligated to go out and DO things and I don’t like that feeling.  It may be inconvenient sometimes, but I’m mostly happy not having a car.  This is not to say it won’t change at some point, but for the most part it works for me.

So I walk a lot and ride the bus.  A lot of people in Albany put down the public transportation system here, but by and large they are people who don’t utilize the system in place.  People say that CDTA sucks because of things they heard years ago – things that aren’t actually true.

Because I am a people watcher, I don’t usually disengage myself from the bus when I’m riding it.  I watch people, I overhear snippets of conversation and I look at the advertisements on the buses, but the advertising always makes me sad.

I like advertising on public transportation because it’s optional.  I don’t feel subjected to it, but rather like I can look at it or not, read it or not, pay attention or not.  Looking at it, seeing it, it’s not a requirement to ride the bus, but it’s something to do while you’re riding.

The reason it makes me sad, though, is how little of it there is, and how out-of-date most of it is.  This is saddening because it means that advertisers aren’t taking this form of marketing effective.  I see the buses covered in ads for television and car dealerships on the outside of the buses, but the insides are left comparatively bare.  It’s a shame because it means that CDTA is not getting the necessary money to make the improvements that would help make things better for the riders, if not change the minds of people who will always think that CDTA is a worthless endeavor in the city of Albany.