Junior Year

So... yeah. The other day I realized I've only got two years left in school. Public school, that is. Okay, that's not true. I've realized it since the day my sophomore year ended. I've been counting down since middle school, and it's finally drawing to a close. If two years can be considered 'drawing to a close.' Considering I've been in school nearly twelve years already, I think it can be.
Well, I finally started truly thinking about what I want to do with my life. And guess what: I STILL have no clue. So many ideas ran through my head that I finally just stopped thinking about it and went to do something way more important and productive: whooping up on those Japanese kids on Mario Kart Wii.
What do I really want to do, and who do I want to be? One thing is for certain: I want to join the service. Air Force, most likely. Depending on what kind of physical and mental shape I'm in when I graduate, I may join the Marines. Not sure yet. You gotta be all sorts of screwed up to even consider joining the USMC, much less actually putting your name on the dotted line. My mother disagrees with me. She says the Marine Corps turns perfectly normal, sane people into psychos. That's exactly what I want to be.
What do I want to do, exactly, when I get there? That's an entirely different question. I can't be a pilot because my eyesight isn't good enough. I could possibly be a combat controller, maybe. But that would consist of maybe, possibly being shot at once in a while, which is the problem my family has. I've considered joing the Security Forces, getting that blue beret, but that's what everyone wants to do. They say that in the USAF, you either work on planes or you guard planes. If you're lucky, you get in to flight school. If you're even luckier, you get to fly. I do NOT want to be a mechanic. I don't have the patience. I'mma be all like, "It's fixed." And some poor sap fires a rocket and it goes off backwards.
I've committed myself to joining the military, and I don't want to back out. I'd never forgive myself. But there's so many questions to ask: college first, or get my degree after enlistment? Active duty or reserves? Blah blah, blah blah blah.
I've still got two years to think about it. Oh, shit! ONLY TWO YEARS!

Camp Mikell-- Proof of God

What an absolutely perfect topic for the first real post. So I just got back from the greatest place in the world, Camp Mikell, nestled in the North Georgia mountains in Toccoa, Georgia. I've been going to Mikell for three summers now, in addition to three years attending DYC, a diocesan retreat for middle- and high school-aged kids. I've been on staff for two, almost three years.
Anyway, Mikell is about the biggest part of my life right now. I know all my best friends through camp which can be kind of a pain sometimes since we come from all over Georgia, even beyond. In some cases, there's people from Tennessee, Florida, even as far away as Washington D.C. and Illinois, but that's pretty rare.
The past week I was counseling at one of the camp sessions, Performing Arts Camp. It's a camp for rising 4th to rising 9th graders. It sounds like that could get a little messy, but it isn't 99% of the time. Counseling was one of the most rewarding (and difficult!) experiences of my life. By the third day I hated children and wanted them all to fall in the creek or something. But when I saw that final performance, what all our hard work amounted to, it was something else. I realized that I was one of the thirty or fourty-something guiding lights those kids had that week. Twenty counselors plus twenty-five or so summer staff, and I was one of them.

About two weeks ago, I also counseled the Kid I session, which is 3rd-5th graders. There were only 77 kids at this session, compared to the maxed-out capacity of 125 kids at PA Camp. Despite there being fewer kids, there were more problems at this camp. I was actually in a cabin at Kid I, as opposed to being a commons counselor, who helps out with all the cabins. There was one kid who was intent on breaking every single counselor, guy and girl, and lucky me, I ended up with him. I never thought I'd tell a kid I hated him, but I think I told Nile that at least three times a day.

Overall, though, Kid I was an enormous success for me. I gained new friendships with counselors and campers and earned experience you can only get putting up with nine-year-olds for a week. Would I do it again? In a hearbeat.

Whenever I try to explain Camp Mikell to people, I always have a difficult time. It's impossible to tell stories without mentioning the inside jokes and the camp traditions that no one gets. There's an old saying that goes, "From the outside looking in, you can't understand it. From the inside looking out, you can't explain it." I'm not sure if it originate at camp or what, but it certainly applies. Just because Mikell is such an amazing place, I'm gonna say camp takes full credit for that one.

Some people call us a cult. Do I take offense to that? No. May as well be true. When you think of a cult, you think of a hundred people in a small area dressing, talking, and acting the same. The description of Mikell isn't far off from that. We're all flip-flop-wearing, Nalgene-toting, booga-boogaing (see? inside joke), tie-dye-making, missing-more-than-a-few-brain-cells crazy people, and I wouldn't change that for anything. But as similiar as we are, we're all different. And that's why Camp Mikell is so special, and that's all the proof I need.

The Last Page... err, First

Yes, it's about time the fastest typer in the southeast United States got a blog. I was just too lazy to get around to it. I don't honestly expect anyone to read it for, oh, a trillion years, maybe. I just need some sort of publicized portal to write down what I think and feel. Actually, that might end badly.
Anyway, I'll be posting stuff occassionally, but most certainly not religiously. If I say I'll post something on Tuesday of Week C, it probably won't happen until Friday of Week K. Or maybe it'll happen Thursday of Week B, provided it hasn't come yet. There's a delicate and precise formula for blog posting that involves letters, numbers, tanker trucks, B-2 Spirit bombers, the USS Abraham Lincoln, and thirty Cold War-era satellites linking up in Corpus Christi, Texas through the Halo 3 Xbox Live Japanese servers. Tarzan probably falls in there somewhere.
So here's the deal: I'll post about my life, my hobbies, what's going on and stuff, all that good junk. I'll try not to be that kid who blogs about how life sucks and I'm going to go kill myself. Nope, not me. I'm not the most optimistic person, but for the most part, I like life. It's something to do.
I'm going to post me first REAL blog in the next day or two. I'll be doing it a lot between now and the end of July because I pretty much have nothing to do. So peace out. This been Alex, AKA Stumbly.