What I Got from Camp

I've been asked before, during, and after camp: What do you want/ are you getting/ did you get from your experience at camp?

Which is weird because we were also told camp isn't "for us" it is for the mentees.

I think the biggest thing I learned from camp was to a change in perspective on TIME.

The first day at camp I tried managing TIME by typical standards. It's now 7pm -Dinner Time. It's now 9pm -Course Room Time. It's now 11pm - Sleep Time.

Then for the next couple days -due to the fact that I didn't know the schedule or have a watch to look at, the meaning of TIME changed for me. If you want to make it through camp, you have to adjust your view of time. Waking up is whenever someone else's alarm goes off. Breakfast is when you're told it is. Course room will last as long as it lasts and then something else -maybe lunch -will occur. 

Time was essentially placed in someone else's hands. It wasn't yours to worry about. What you had to focus on was pacing yourself for each "session" be it lunch, an activity, or course room. You had no way of measuring or predicting how long or short something would be so you just had to give patience and allocate in your MIND time for things to transpire. In doing so you were able to go from session to session without getting impatient, anxious, concerned, or worried. It wasn't your problem.

I continued this mentality when I came to work on Tuesday. I'll do my day project by project, session by session, moment to moment. It worked a lot better than my usually way of eyeing the time. Normally my day runs like: It's 9:30am, better get ready to post stuff for PHB. It's 11pm I should start worrying about lunch now. It's 2pm, 1 hour until it's 3pm and I begin "shutdown for the day" time. When time isn't an issue, you focus more on WHAT YOU'RE DOING -not what you should be doing based on the current time.

Your day is separated into sessions/experiences/moments -not time. It makes it easier to "give patience" and "be present" to what's going on.