not sure

I started having dreams again, which hadn't occured for a long time. The funny thing is, the evening before the sleep in which they started appearing, I called it to myself, that I would have a dream that night. After the longitudinal craziness of the summer, I've finally settled down into what I might call my "Murakami" period. Murakami, of course, writes novels and stories. More specifically, many of his stories involve a character caught somewhere in between the dream world and the actual world, which is what I have been feeling like.
It's not that the days have necessarily been monotonous and repetitious. There have been parts, but it's mostly thanks to my own convictions that I've spent much time alone, engrossed in books or just aimlessly wandering around the house from couch to couch, bed to bed. I have seen people, been with people. Driven places, done errands, etc.
Where the grey area lies is in this last week, I've been in a sort of philosophical whirlpool of sorts. I've thought a lot about death, and how it scares me. I've thought about my own loneliness and why is and what it entails. About the differences between my going away to the east coast this year and last year, of which there are surprisingly few. A very important few, but still but a few.
And I suppose how afraid I am of a bunch of things. School being the most pressing. Being away from my family for so long. Not that I'm itching to be in their company all the time, but something about having them accessible. They have a way of making me feel responsible for being with them, and it's not that I don't enjoy it. I do end up enjoying it, however reluctant I am to having a meal with them and answering the same questions and talking about the same thing each time. There's something else that makes it meaningful. I suppose that connection between myself and where I came from, before I was alive. And the knowledge that once they're gone, pu-pu, there's no going back to hearing their oft-repeated stories or applying their old-world wisdom to my life now.
I wouldn't call it being depressed, more like seriously pensive. I like that word a lot, actually. Sometimes I just out-think myself. Funny thing is, when i'm actually doing things and being with people, I'm not that way. I mean, I still try to think deeply, but I'm never out-thinking myself. I'm never thinking myself into an alley way with a dead-end.
Which leads to the dreams. I'm quiet a lot of the day. I'm having an inner dialouge with myself, and that's where most of my daily interactions take place. Once I stir up enough thoughts, worries, feelings in my head, they don't go to sleep as I do. They stay awake and alive, and I can hear them fooling around in my head as I'm trying to close my eyes. I know they'll be up to no good as soon as the rest of me can't do anything about it. I'm inhabiting this world where it's all hypothetical - most of what i'm beating around in my head has to do with what happens once I get to school all the way to far far beyond that - and I'm attempting to play out every scenario in my head before it happens. This would go under the category of out-thinking myself, swirling thoughts in the head that become dreams, etc. When I've been with people it hasn't been so bad. I've been in that hypothetical, dream-like state most of the past week. Stuck with wanting to be with myself and becoming lost in my own labyrinthian conceptions of what could or should or would happen.
It's a lonely journey without street signs or directions. Once in a while, I see a familiar face, and I come back to earth.

motto.

i like camp. i'll just put that out there. nice people, never bored.

however.

being with children has made me wonder a few things. about? a bunch of stuff.

When I attempt to remember my childhood, I remember myself as a "good" kid. I behaved, wasn't mean, listened to directions, etc etc. Many of the children who I am now in charge of come from similar families, and yet do not do any of these things, most of all the etc etc part. So this begs the question: Are kids today (and I do feel my skin sagging to the ground as I say that) more spoiled and worsely behaved than those in my "day", or do I remember my childhood incorrectly? There's good evidence on both sides, though more on the former. To start with the latter, a few individuals I've talked to here remember their childhood similarly. They too were good kids. They don't remember giving counselors a hard time, being assholes (more on that later) to their bunkmates, not following simple directions, etc etc. I'm willing to bet that most people, when polled, would answer without much of a different opinion.

the children I have had have been awful, awful children. They are vicious to each other, have no respect for the job I'm doing (Just tonight i was told that they like their CITs [counselors in training] better than Meir [my co-counselor] and I. Needless to say i'm a little upset.), don't follow directions hardly ever, and think they own the world. I don't know for sure if this is a result of iPods and cell phones and whatever else they get to have that I didn't have, but at this point it seems the more stuff available, the more stuff is bought by bountifully comfortable American Jewish parents, the more entitled the child professes himself to be. respect goes down the tubes, as does the anticipation of an easy job for me.

It's a neverending topic. Luckily the times here end in 1.5 weeks.

Again, I'm having fun. My patience is not. Nor is my opinion of the next generation. to be continued.