What has happened to me?
What has happened to me? Seriously. I have been trying and failing to write a blog for hours. Everything I type morphs into an insipid truism: “What an amazing camp!”, “I’m so humbled and pleased to be part of this group!”. Which are true, but bland.
Why am I worried about whether my blog is boring? What happened to the colorbarf that would write a blog about whatever came to mind, come hell or high watermelon? I’m not sure, but it sure does bum me out. I ought to shake this self-censorship business; it’s bad for creativity.
All I want is write a post about how much this weekend meant to me, sans writers’ block…
But the blog keeps ending up too boring, not documenting anything of worth. Or my other drafts turn into a dramatic saga about “switching from belly to freefly” (which HAS been fraught with insecurity and much eating of humble pie). Eesh, I’m strangely sanitizing my own opinions. Apparently, I have taken to heart the ever-present raking-over-the-coals that skydivers do to each other. It’s that low-grade grilling; someone posts too much, or too little. Their posts are too humble-braggy, or too sophomoric, or too much something else. Oof, when did I start worrying about what people though about this blog. Yuck.
I’ll just type up this blog as fast as I can and hope I don’t overthink it.
Last weekend was superb!
It was a dream. I had a blast. I want to fly bigway practice again and again and again.
Polaris (minus Katie who had to miss the event) put on an Intro To Bigway type camp at Perris. Two-plane shots of 17ish ways the first two days, working up to a third day of two plane shots of 30ish ways. 30ish ways doubled my biggest head down skydive!
I am thrilled to be allowed to attend at all. All weekend, my brain kept asking, “Damn, how did I get into this?”. Then I reminded myself I’ve been working my tush off lately to get here. But still, I feel honored when organizers trust me do be safe and do my job at an event like this. I like to think I reaffirmed their decision to let me attend.
And folks, the people, the PEOPLE, made my weekend.
The organizers obviously make or break a camp, so the good experience started at the top with them. The good vibes trickled down from there. The coaching: stellar. The briefs and debriefs: thorough. The level of jokes/happy-fun-times to seriousness: perfect. I felt set up for success, but also challenged. That’s a tricky line to walk.
And the organizers enticed an awesome group of attendees.
So many funny, welcoming people, so many talented flyers, came from far-flung locations for this weekend. I feel like a dorky kid after summer camp, wanting to tell all the funny stories about all my new friends from camp. (And, the event was in my backyard. I guess, once again, that’s the beauty of SoCal.) After events, I spend far too much time debating whether I should add people on Facebook and/or follow them on Instagram. Am I being overzealous? Overly friendly? Too chipper and over-eager? But, I’m trying to fight that instinct and just add them. I had such a great time meeting these people; I sure hope they know that I thought they were the bees knees.
I have a skydiving hangover.
I constantly check the socials, hoping to find cool photos or videos of the event. I check my calendar. I scheme about upcoming events. I want to do anything but work. I just want to think about skydiving and talk about skydiving and go skydiving after an event that good. (Fortunately, I had a badass tunnel session Monday to follow it up, so that helped.)
But, but, the final but: I feel like I can’t go spouting off how much stoke and hype is bursting out of me.
Because someone who wanted to go, couldn’t make it.
And I don’t want to rub their face in it. For their sake, I feel like I oughta contain how thrilled I am, trying not to relive the weekend in all its glory constantly. Nothing sucks worse than hearing about how fun a party was that you couldn’t go to.
How do you spare someone’s feelings while also communicating your gratitude to everyone who made this camp awesome? For now I’ll just cross my fingers and hope this blog walks that line, but it probably doesn’t. Maybe they just won’t read it.
