Life is over glorified
This weekend was a roller coaster for me. I’ve had ups and downs with this program. It started truly when I left on Friday. In school we just finished up a really depressing documentary (documentary…Wts… we’re making one here? Okay I tried to connect) and me being a negative individual with social outcast views didn’t help at all. We also had a huge debate that everyone was heated about. It was a bully/victim/bystander thing and we were tasked to figure out who had the most responsibility in the matter. I won’t get into that because I’m still a little riled up from it. So keep in mind I was in a state of mixed emotions that seemed too overflow my brains small capacity to function in real world situations. My mental strength is weak.
The next morning, the first day of this retreat Saturday, I got up and was excited to get here to the Common Grounds Center. Everything was swell. Grace Darrow’s mom came to picked up Erin and me. We talked a bit about Wts, all was fine. And then we got here. I felt super anxious, probably because of my last blog post. I swear I didn’t mean all that stuff. I was just trying to prove a point. A very horrible way to showcase it, but it worked. Anyways we got into our groups and played a bit with the cameras. Which, by the way are amazing. They might be old, but holy guacamole they’re awesome. I never touched a camera like that before let alone us one. And this is one experience that will never cease from my memory.
We then had Greta’s dad come in. He sort of reminded me on my dad, but more tech savvy and a works well with kids kind of guy. Hopefully I didn’t spell her name wrong, I apologize if I did. He showed us different aesthetics and the fundamentals of how to take an experienced shot. I was in total awe. After that I can’t tell you how many selfies and photos I took to show off what I learned to my parents. No you can’t see them. I can’t even look at them without the feeling of a cringe. He also got to talking about different famous people who’ve created these incredible documentaries that I now aspire to create. Especially Ken’s. I don’t know if that’s his name or not, but it was the first guy Greta’s dad talked about. He made the one with the Civil War series or the History Of Baseball. I liked his because it has this professional feel and I know it won’t go into play with my group’s topic, but man it was cool. While listening to Greta’s dad talk I kept having this thought run through my head and it makes around zero sense to me, but all I knew was that emotion plays a big part in trying to change people’s views. My thought was “Eros and a numerous amount of different emotions will flood our docudrama,” I said I had problems. I think I warned you all. This part of our retreat is what I’d call an up in my roller coaster.
This next piece was right before bed. We all had dinner and we’re settled down in the dining hall. Then out of nowhere Tim and Bill just slam us with the thought of humanity and worldwide issues dealing with controversial arguments and how to develop a neutral tone while explaining your side, but hearing the other. My initial thoughts consisted of “I don’t think I can even begin to comprehend this,” “Nope,” and “I’m a child! Why do you ask this of me?” And then Nathan came out with a statement “When you show empathy towards someone you’re more likely to get them to listen,” by now my brain was fried and I was not into it, but once reflecting I see why it’s important. When he first brought that into our conversation I totally disagreed and was contemplating whether or not I should jump in and report my feelings of why it does nothing to advance your argument. But empathizing with someone has many benefits and I’m actually working on this part of my Self Awareness reflection in our learning scales. I think is one down then suddenly changed to an up in 0.00001 seconds. All I really need to work on is how to convey a point and be open minded to them along without being oppressive.

Overall my group has our stuff together. For the past month we had the hardest time of staying in contact and it was a free for all. You could seriously do whatever you wanted and I think I took that to far. I didn’t touch anything for the past three weeks. So yeah… we fixed it. Huddling around a table we discussed different ways of exertional conversations between us and Ben was apart as well. We exchanged emails and phone numbers. There’s not even a hint if anyone got the text due to bad cell reception, but while I’m writing this at my house because I didn’t get close to finishing this I noticed I received the text from the group chat. We also came up with the idea of creating a doc with the different dates to just show where we are. You could even say you did nothing for all we care. As long as we know who’s up to what. Recap of this last paragraph my group has created several ways to get in contact with each other. It doesn’t even matter what you got as long as you check in.
Now going father for what I first started talking about I think since it’s been the second time I’ve seen everyone I opened up a little. I noticed I wasn’t as self conscious. I talked to others and held some conversations so I feel pretty good leaving this retreat. Not for the reason of getting away from everyone, but that I now know I can talk to people without freaking out and maybe people’s views of me changed.

I think this has got to be the worst down for me. So getting real here, my friend is dealing with several Mental Health disorders and I really want to interview her. Since I’m so hyped I email her.

{A little background is that my email name is Rachael Ross. I just took out her name for the sake of having it anonymous. So the ones that say sent to Rachael are the emails she sent to me.}

(Click on the image to view larger. You can scroll on it once enlarged)

I think emailing doesn’t work…  I may never talk to her via email again. The thing is she hasn’t emailed me back and she personally wanted to be part of our documentary so I don’t really want her in it if she’s not in top of things herself. It could hinder our work.