#stories from summer camp

[mitamicah]

Stories from summer camp - masterpost

Hi everyone

This will be an even more personal blog post than I usually do since I’ll talk about my experiences at summer camp this year from July 16 – July 29 2023 (Some of you might have noticed I was unavailable/less online within this time frame). I have chosen to do it in smaller chapters where this will be a masterpost summing up the different topics. If you then want more context, you can then click on the different links where I’ll go into more detail.

First up: what’s the summer camp?

Summer camp is my term for a combined 2x1 week course at a specialized music school for adults. You chose a topic for each week. You live at the school for the weeks you are attending together with other music loving adults from the age of 17 years old and beyond. There will be morning and evening activities you can attend ranging from yoga and rave in the morning to jam, open mic, talks and concerts in the evening. Every week ends with a showcase where all courses show what they’d been working on that week.

How was it?

It was great! Being my second year out as nonbinary at summer camp I felt a bit conscious about the fact that I am different from the norm (see chapter 2), yet people were nice and supportive of me and my gender identity. There were people I really bonded with (see chapter 6+7), and like it is the case every year, I especially enjoyed the open mic events (see chapter 8). It was a year with some downs like when I became selectively mute the first Wednesday (chapter 4) or felt like I’d embarrassed myself in front of the whole camp (chapter 5) but there were also amazing moments like when I wrote a song with somebody I only had met two days prior by accident (chapter 6) or got to live the dream of being Jere for a day performing my own rendition of Cha Cha Cha the last evening (chapter 12). The first week I was one of five singers in a pop rock band (chapter 3) which turned out way better than I feared when first meeting my bandmates. The week after I got to be asocial and nerdy by locking myself into a sound studio late into the night producing a käärijä cover (chapter 10). All in all, this was another wonderful two weeks where I got to just be myself without any strings attached. As mentioned earlier, if you want any more information and story times, I’ll be submitting twelve additional posts that’ll be linked below.

1) Live your musical passion – What’s summer camp? 2) You cannot hide, when you got green hair: My experiences as a minority person at summer camp. 3) Life as a singer: experiences from the practice room of the pop rock cover band 4) The world is loud and steals your voice: How I became mute for half an hour 5) Mission Cha Cha Cha week one: How not to ask people to jam with you 6) Magic is created in the smallest of moments: How I accidentally wrote a song 7) Finding the one that truly sees you: Connecting with Juels 8) My kind of party: How the open mic events were the highlights of my summer camp experience yet again. 9) Suddenly becoming a morning person: how I spend my mornings singing, fanboying and raving 10) Lazy Saturday: The day between courses 11) Mission Cha Cha Cha week two: how I used my special interest to my advantage in a studio setting 12) Embodying Jere: How I finally got to perform Cha Cha Cha live

[shirley-fizz-grenadine]

realized something that may have been normal growing up in kentucky that. others Might Not Relate to

please rb for reach

[trans-xianxian]

I was telling campers What I Think are kid appropriate scary stories this week and apparently a parent got mad about one of them and like contacted us about it yesterday and the person who got the complaint/passed it along was like oh the counselor didn't know what was "developmentally appropriate" for that age. and I'm like. on one hand I get it but on the other hand I heard that story when I was that age, have told it at other camps before, and when the girl whose parents complained said she was getting scared I told her she should step away and find a new activity and she refused. so it also seems a bit silly

[izpira-se-zlato]

After the way yesterday and today have gone, what do we think more likely/will occurr first -- Jance kiss on stage, or someone posting hole on IG?

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

I was just listening to a song I used to love while we were friends. I listened to it so often, we talked so often, it became the background music to our relationship.

I'm listening to it while I knit. I often forget that I started knitting because of you. I remembered tonight. It's strange, I never knitted anything for you. I've knitted for other loved ones, rarely for myself, but never for you. I remembered you showing me the amazing things you made, and I wished I could get to that level of skill. But at that time, you had to explain to me how to purl because I couldn't get it.

Everything reminds me of you in a terrible way. Everything I do is an echo of you. I started painting so that I could paint for you. I started knitting to bond with you. I hear your voice in the music I listen to. You're haunting the things that I love. Will I ever make a brush stroke or stitch without you on my mind?

[melien]

I just had an embarrassing interaction with someone that I really want to get along with and then Doris's advice she gave Milo popped into my head. That person has moved on to other things and probably isn't even thinking of it! Thank you for writing an awesome character like her, who is honestly helping me deal with my social anxiety right now! 😊

Ahhhh this is so sweet, my heart is so full right now😭😭 Yeah I would say I agree with Doris here, this definitely can be helpful to remember, people have a short-term memory most of the time. But I also see Milo's perspective, some people could indeed get a certain impression of us from a small interaction. I guess it depends, but I do believe most of the time people are focused on themselves and their own actions (probably how not to embarrass themselves haha). The hard part is telling this to our brains. I was thinking how social anxiety doesn't just come out of nowhere, it usually comes from a string of prior bad experiences and all the silly societal norms imposed on us that center around playing some fake part and not fully being yourself, so it's definitely quite hard to put yourself out there repeatedly. So I'm proud of you and your little steps! Man I love rambling about human psychology, it's one of my special interests haha and I definitely try to put those things and different perspectives to reflect on into my stories too.

But yeah, I love Doris a lot, she's the best and so mature for her age! (I think she's like 17-18 in the story and Milo is about 4-5 years older?) It's really refreshing for me that the two siblings with completely opposite personalities are trying to support each other as well as they can. Doris usually speaks from her experience as an extroverted non-overthinker, and maybe it doesn't fully help Milo immediately to internalise it and apply it to themselves, but it does make it a bit easier to see that their sister is in their corner and is trying to be so understanding and helpful. It's really valuable to have someone who is validating our feelings and not acting annoyed at our anxious brain. Ahhh I love these two🥹

[maddieinmanart]

Always feel weird posting OC stuff but here take a sad guy and the only kid who thinks he’s cool

[megamindsupremacy]

Fellow camp counselor friend showed me her kids’ woodcarving creations Anti and Social which are blocks of wood with nails hammered in for eyes and legs. Then she turned them around and showed me how the kids had given them two buttholes each and I laughed so hard I had to leave the dining hall to compose myself

[nickbutnodick]

summer camp was both the most fun and exciting week of the year and also the worst and most terrifying

[seafoam-taide]

so crazy how i went from knowing nothing about pokemon except the basics since its a pop culture thing, never having played a game, not watching anything related, just not interested or touching it, to owning and playing 4 different pokemon games, putting hundreds of hours into fan games, and actually knowing and understanding it on at least a casual fan level in like. a year and a half. all because of. pixelmon lmao

[mitamicah]

Stories of summer camp pt. 8

This is part 8 of my stories from summer camp series - for better context you can check out

Masterpost | Previous part | Next part

8) My kind of party: How the open mic events were the highlights of my summer camp experience yet again.

Some may find jam sessions to be the most fun, others may prefer the showcase party at Friday where we’d share all we’d created during the week with each other. To me the real party and soul of the summer camp will forever be the open mic events at Thursdays. This is the night where people share their own original songs. It is evenings of honest emotion and of welcoming people into your world. It is an evening that will be tough, vulnerable, and beautiful. And yet again I had two of such beautiful nights at summer camp this year.

For the open mic in week one I’d decided to play my song Little Red Bird that I’d written to my grandmother after she passed away the year before. To those that may remember I got myself a Flapjack tattoo as a tribute to my grandmother since she passed away during the premiere of Thanks to Them in October of last year, so my mind connected Flapjack’s passing with my grandmother getting a spirit animal with her into heaven. This is all very ironic however since my grandmother tried her best to make me promise never to get a tattoo. The chorus of the song goes: I have to break a promise, I never fully made, ‘cause I see you in the little red bird, and I don’t want to forget.

Well, first week there were 21 attendees signed up for open mic. Nobody knew the setlist which was new for all of us and since I also had the song with Zeke (see a previous chapter) I didn’t know which song to keep in mind first. In the end I was called to the stage with my own song first which went well – I almost felt like crying at the beginning of the second verse but it only added to the emotion. Honestly, I think it was the best I’d ever played the song.

The second week I decided to play a song I’d written the previous Friday that was a sort of open letter to my past self. Of course, I decided to change it up the same day of the open mic event by adding a bridge and altering the second verse so this time I felt more nervous to perform. 27 attendees were signed up this time but luckily, we had a setlist this time around. I got to play my own song first and then I’d been asked to play with a girl called Nadja (not her real name) which I was very honored by.

I’d already told you about how Juels surprised me but that was far from the only one that touch me those two evenings. There were songs about demensia, about loss, about being true to yourself, about break ups, about good times, about a dream with a horse that wanted you to eat beetroot. All that your heart desires and more. It was two long but great evenings deserving of their own chapter in my opinion.

[transingthoseformers]

No yeah we exactly needed to see this side of the Story™️, especially in regards to Overlord, Damus, and just the entire setup. ... But especially Overlord tbh, as it seems like (as if we didn't already know) Damus's sheer hatred of him is biased as all hell.

[britishchick09]

senpai at sea! (and lake) :D

bonus boats:

[urne-buriall]

oh my go. you did not give us the date night in the summer camp fic?! (is it because it would've changed the fic rating from T? 😅 may i introduce you to timestamp fics……🤡)

and we still earned our "Sleeping with the Entity" badge and everything! my sincere apologies for the absence of the scene, it just wasn't in the design. my ideal would be if others simply volunteered to write these scenes for us

[smile-files]

ok lol sorry to post an oc out of nowhere but i just drew my character shai and they turned out too cute not to share with you all :)

[magentagalaxies]

i think it's very fascinating that what seem to be the two most popular songs from other girls currently are "human shield" and "eye of the beholder". aka a song about navigating a platonic bond that's intense enough that you confuse it for something romantic at first and a song about setting a boundary to stop enabling a self-destructive friend and the strength that comes from admitting you're hurt. i don't have any specific line to draw between these two songs but yeah