On Friday evening, I bought myself a gorgeous iPhone on Optus. My goodness is it elegant. Better than I ever could have imagined I think. I only had to wait until about 11:30am on Saturday morning for my number to port across - which is pretty impressive considering the huge amount of mobile network activity across all carriers on Friday. Boy, did the iPhone launch cause some awesome systems failures in Telstra - worse than I’ve ever seen before in my 4 years of working there.

Anyway, all was good. The battery seemed to diminish qute quickly, but I was connected to wifi for several hours, so I shouldn’t complain.

But Saturday night, something started to go a little bad. It looked like my iPhone was taking ages to charge. After leaving it for a while, it seemed as though it just wasn’t charging over 10% before stopping charging. It’d then start charging again when it was almost empty. That was sad. And then last night, it just seems to not be charging at all… even though it has the little lightning bolt icon.

So here I am at the Apple Store, hoping that I will find my hero, and they will fix, or give me a new iPhone :)

Oh yeah… that camp that I’m running.

It’s awesome really. Things started off tough for me. It seemed to just take me quite a while to “be there” as far as mindset goes. It was a very though Saturday night and Sunday morning. But Sunday over lunch, I began thinking program, and started to feel like things were ok, and started to find my place and feel content.

What was cool was that as Sunday went on, I began to realise that the team of leaders this year is nothing short of awesome. I think I’d unknowingly “outsourced” more activities to them to run than ever before, and in the lead up to this week, I realised that and I think that might’ve made me a bit more anxious than previous years. But like I said, as Sunday went on, I realised these guys are fantastic, and they’ve taken the activities and really run with them. So much so that I was not at all worried about not being there this morning… it’s well and truly under control.

Kedron is drawing nearer, and I begin to start second guessing myself a little and just wondering if I’ve done everything I need to and if everything’s organised. Even though I know it all is under control, I can’t help but get a little nervous and anxious. I was talking to Melinda (the overall camp director) last night, and sharing with her how I just can’t wait to actually get to Kedron and get into it. Once I’m there, that’s all I’m focused on. No outside world distractions - no work, no wedding prep (even though I love doing that, Debbie!) - just 100% camp. And whatever happens, happens. I can deal with it on the fly. I love that.

It feels like I’ve almost been debriefing camp in my head before it’s even begun. Perhaps I’ve actually just been debriefing the “prep” section in my head. Cos it hasn’t really been a pretty one this year. It’s been a lot of adjustment and been very different. I guess the obvious one of being engaged and having something else as a priority in my life, but the other difference and adjusting has been having the two separate parts of camp - teen (years 7-9) and senior high (years 10-12). I guess it was always inevitable that the other program director and myself would clash a bit and see things differently… but I don’t think either of us thought about that until just recently.

It will be a very interesting debrief time after camp as both of us program directors, and Melinda and Julius, the overall directors, sit down and talk about the new ground that was covered. It will be good to talk through what we all found hard about having two, sometimes very separate, camps running concurrently; but also what we found awesome - cos I don’t doubt that this is an awesome thing.

It’s always just hard being part of a pilot or trying something so new and different like this. You aren’t lucky enough to have knowledge and experience of previous years and camps. And you don’t get to sit back and learn from other mistakes from before - cos you’re the one making the mistakes for the first time!

It’s been ultra-challenging for me. But I don’t think it’s over.

I sat back last night and wondered if I want to do this all over again next year. And then I wondered why in the world I was thinking that. Yeah, it’s been the hardest year for me, for sure. But why the heck should I run away from Kedron cos I had a hard year? That’s a bit stupid I reckon.

It’ll be cool to look at it all from a distance in a few months though.

edit: one thing that is making me anxious is Howie coming up to camp to run a tear game. It’s awesome he’s coming - he does all the work while I get to go and have a nap… but I am worried about how much he’s going to offend people and whether they might send him away before he’s even finished the game.

Oh dear.

Wednesday and Thursday were some all-day training things. Found it hard to keep from being tired just sitting and listening. But it was good stuff. And then today has been pretty relaxed too - I packed up my desk here in the city this morning before heading out to Parra to get it all set up so that it’s all ready for Monday morning. We were supposed to have a meeting this arvo about 08/09 sales targets, and so I trotted back into the city… but in the end, it was postponed. That was a bit frustrating, but not so bad. I had some chinese food for lunch, and then just went through some work emails briefly. What’s really strange (for me anyway) is that I haven’t had my work computer on and been logged in since Monday afternoon. It’s quite strange and unusal for me.

Now I’m just sitting here killing time waiting for my boss’s new computer to finish building and get it set up for her. Yes, I’m a mobile sales specialist. :)

One week til Kedron begins. Crazy. There’s still a bit to do… but not much I don’t think. I’m feeling quite anxious… but that’s normal for me. I’m pretty certain everything is done… I just want to get there and get into it.

I’m gonna head home soon and start working on the final hour-by-hour timetable that I like to have. And that is good to have. Then it will be dinner at parentals’ time with Debbie and my sister and Ryan too.

Us four director type people had a get-together on Monday evening to go through where we were at with program, leaders, and everything else under the sun that is needed to run a camp. And it took a while… I eventually left Kedron (a good 45 minutes from my place) at about midnight. So that has meant that I have been pretty tired - so here I am in bed at 9:30, ready to sleep very soon. Cos I have to do that meeting thing all over again tomorrow night with all the leaders.

I went to the meeting on Monday with quite a few holes in my program that needed filling. And once we got stuck into working out leaders and programs and such, my stress levels just began to increase, and I sat silently, anxiously, wanting to run away. I think the fact that this camp is so huge isn’t making things easy for me. And also the fact that there’s two program directors - one for senior high (yr 10-12), and me for teen (year 7-9). So it’s not just me being able to make all the decisions about the program, and just deferring to the main directors about other stuff… there’s another person, and I think that’s just taking much more time and effort for me to adjust to this than I thought.

Still, the evening ended with my program filled. All activities at least written on paper. They’ll get organised over the next few weeks - but at least now I know what they will be. And tomorrow night I’ll allocate [they'll volunteer hopefully] leaders to quite a few of the activities for them to organise and then run.

And I even got an unexpected call from a booking agency who said that a band I’d enquired about would most likely love to come and play at camp. So awesome!

And I even have an awesome brother working for Tear who is going to come and help out by running a simulation game.

Yet I still can’t help but feel quite a bit uneasy about things. Don’t know why really. Don’t know if it’s just anxiousness; selfishness about not being the only program director; thinking things will go wrong…

Do not be anxious. [Phil 4:6]

It’s pretty clear. There’s not a whole lot of arguing you can do against that.

I definitely feel like my passion has changed this year. In a big way. Maybe changed isn’t the right word. It just doesn’t feel like it’s there - I don’t feel as enthusiastic about Kedron as I want to. Don’t get me wrong, once I get to camp, I know I’m going to love it - I always do and I know this camp will be no different; the camp itself is an incredible time! I’m just finding it a lot harder to be passionate and enthusiastic about all this organisation as I have been in previous years.

I will persevere though. God’s given me a job to do. And I’ll do it. And do it well. And just hope that He hasn’t decided that my time at Kedron is coming to an end. It’d be nice if I can keep doing this for a while.

Both Thursday and Friday were pretty good days at work. I spent quite a bit of time creating a couple of proposal templates for us to use at work - well actually, there were a couple floating around, but they needed tidying up and updating, so I made them pretty and easy to edit for each customer. It was actually quite fun.

Thursday night was Kedron meeting #2. Great evening… and feeling quite a lot more relaxed now that there’s a bunch of program ideas in the air and written down. But now the pressure’s on me to put them into a program. And I’m feeling like I want to do something quite different with the structure this year… which is hard cos I have to work in with the Senior High program as well. But we’ll see what happens :)

And then last night was off to Wenty to watch Les Miserable being performed by the Holroyd Musical & Dramatic Society. Mum got a part in it, so it was awesome to go and see her perform… but I definitely enjoyed the musical for what it was. Never seen Les Mis before, but it was brilliant. And incredibly well done - a very high standard for an amateur production!

Today was glorious - did nothing really. Well, had nothing planned. Debbie and I were having dinner last night and suddenly realised that there was absolutely nothing planned for today. After getting my haircut, I headed round to her place to hopefully see Jen & Howie, hear awesome stories, and maybe even get presents… but Howie wasn’t feeling too wonderful, so it had to be postponed. So we went on an adventure out to Fagan Park, where I’d never been before - that was a bit of fun - and then seeing as we were already sort of north-ish, we kept going and went to Pie in the Sky for lunch. I was very excited on the way :)

And then it’s just been hanging out back here at the House of Bach, watching AFL, playing keyboard and making fun music in GarageBand, and now just having had dinner and watched The Italian Job. Nice day.

Last night I headed round with Carlene to Melinda and Julius’ place for a pretty relaxed evening. We just had a chat about a few things and some ideas that were in our heads, and it was a good evening. I’m feeling hugely more at ease about it all knowing that we have a plan about getting things done between now and camp - albeit a very open plan.

So next week Carlene and I will hang out a bit and drawn up a bit of a plan for the next meeting where we’ll just collect as many activity ideas from all the other leaders as possible, and then we’ll take that away and make a program. Should all go really well, and I’m looking forward to it :)

Definitely can’t wait for the time off work… Mmmmm :)

But this year really is bigger than last year… and really bigger than any camp ever done at Kedron. We’re combining a senior high school camp with the normal teen camp. It will mean that we’re going to basically be creating two separate camps, on the one campsite, but where they overlap at mealtimes and big activties (like outings and such). So that will mean two program directors, and probably more kids than we’ve ever had before.

Talk about a challenge.

I remember when the camp director had the idea in January… he was so keen for it, and my initial reaction was also to be very keen for the idea. And then I started thinking about all the logistical things! But in the end, it was a pretty cool vision that God gave Julius (our camp director), and so I’m pretty excited about being a part of making it happen. And a big challenge will be awesome for us as a team.

Even if thinking about the whole camp causes me to begin making a very long list of things that we need to get done :)