The Fear of an Opportunity

So, this month, I have to write about lets see...obesity, the benefits of organic shopping, and the importance of keeping a journal while you're on a diet. I also have to write about the importance of giving your dog a spa treatment and how such activities can enhance the human-animal bond.

I come home from work everyday with a lot of energy. I don't feel beat down by my 7-8 hour days at the summer camp; I feel strangely energized by it. It feels good to come home at 5:30/6:00 when it's still light outside, or when the sky is just beginning to become smeared with God's spatula slathered in pink icing. And then i come home, sit in front of the computer with my glass of cold green tea to my right and i try to get started with my freelance work and i freeze.

I don't know if i can do this.

I don't know if i can work full time and come home to work on these 6,000 words that i have to churn out every month. I've been having a really hard time and i don't know if it's just that i don't have my new rhythm down yet or its just mentally impossible to do this. Am I going to have to give up this gig, this freelance work that has sustained me without fail for the last few years? It really is the most steady, reliable income I've had in 3 years.

Today I did lunch and pina coladas (very stiff ones too) with my co worker Emily, a spunky woman who is working with me on the summer camp. We were talking at lunch about nutrition and I realized how much I really have retained from writing these newsletters. I was explaining to her the dangers of trans fats and the importance of an antioxidant-rich diet. I thought everybody knew what free radicals and antioxidants were, but I'm learning that over the years, i have acquired a special corner of knowledge. When I completed my spiel on the reality of free radicals wreaking havoc on our bodies during oxidation, Emily looked at me with a new face. She was like, "wow, i didn't know you knew all this stuff." I almost said, "I didn't know either."

This past Tuesday my co workers and I took our campers to Madame Tussaud's Wax Musuem. I love that I'm getting to experience so much of New York as a tourist through this camp. Basically the field trips that I've planned for this camp are a reflection of my own idiosyncratic desires: phantom of the opera, speedboating, yankees games, hershey park, white water rafting, yes chlile i'm going to get my bite out of this place!

Tuesday was my first time at the Wax Museum and I enjoyed it. I find it a strangely educational place, because I realized that i didn't know what quite a few historical figures really looked like. Man, some of these wax figures looked so real; i was afraid to look any of them in the eye for fear that one of them would start blinking. I was looking at Oprah in awe of how real she looked. Down to her glistening teeth. J-Lo didn't look like J-Lo at all, however.

So, the wax museum really is the biggest hustle in the city (yes, more than the battery panhandlers on the 6 train). So, they set the wax figures up in a way that makes it look like they're all at a dinner party laughing it up with us plebians. They made many of the figures very conducive to taking pictures in a way that makes it look like you're really talking to Julia Roberts or Ghandi. Sometimes, they have the wax figures molded into the perfect arch of conversation; they're mouths are open as if in mid sentence, their hands are in the air as if caught in mid gesticulation. They have the very available George Clooney sitting at a dining table free of 5 o'clock shadow, with a wedding ring in a box that is placed (or should i say, bolted) next to his hand and an oh so convenient empty seat across from him for the next lucky girl.

This place really appeals to people's fantasies. It was so funny to watch everybody taking pictures earnestly next to these wax figures, or feigning conversations with past presidents. And they have sales booths all over the place where they're selling DISPOSABLE cameras for $25. What kind of fuckery is that??? But, it was a good lime.

I'm having a really good time with the youngins. They're ungrateful, spoiled, lazy and completely disarming. In the last two weeks I've learned that 13-14 year olds wear really great masks. Underneath all of the layers of disinterestdness, and that infuriating taciturn teenage posture, they really are curioius underneath all that, and most prominently, scared. It's really hard to get some of them to try new things. That has been the most frustrating part of the camp in the last two weeks. But once they do it, they shine, they laugh, they glisten.

Man, if you saw them on their way to their African Dance & Drum Class, you would swear that they were going to the gas chamber. But, once they're in there, one you drag them out of their seats with caustic words and dagger eyes and they get up and dance, they have so much fun. Some of them try not to show it. Most can't hide it. They're masks don't fit that perfectly; and start to slide off their faces.

The good thing is, I think they're starting to accept the camp for what it is and that's why I come home these days weighing much lighter than when the camp first started. I think they realize that this is not a comfort zone camp where they're just going to do a bunch of things that they've done before (like dancing hip hop...come on, how original is that idea??). Every day, or almost every day they're going to be faced with something that looks unfamiliar to them and I love the sweet resignation of their faces. I love to watch them experience the best type of fear there is. The fear of an opportunity.