Not Back to School Camp

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September 10, 2010

My Advisee Group, Oregon Session, 2010

Posted by Nathen under Not Back to School Camp, photography
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This year, the Oregon sessions of Not Back to School Camp were combined into one session so I got to have the same advisee group for two straight weeks for the first time. It was great. In advisee groups, we meet every day and create a new family. We had twice the amount of time to get to know and support each other this time. This was my first advisee group, for example, that had time for each member to tell a short version of their life’s story.

Here they are:

Nathen's Advisee Group, Oregon 2010

On top of the swings are Jonah, Ahren, and Matteo. Below are Lani, Emily, Catie, me, Tina, Kayla, Elijah, Patrick, Laura, and Duckie.

 

June 30, 2010

1,082 Hits In a Month: Aesthetics & Ethics of Fame

Posted by Nathen under Abandon Ship, aesthetics, blogging, charting my life, control, decisions, ELLA, ethics, etiquette, fame, goals/intentions, Jeannie Lee, Lester Family Music, New Moon Records, Not Back to School Camp, statistics, transparency
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In May, this blog got 1,082 “views,” which means that many of its pages showed up on other people’s computer screens for some amount of time in 31 days. That’s my new record, and my first 4-digit month. I got quite excited as the number approached. I was checking my stats page several times a day. It was exciting and uncomfortable. I almost decided that I would not let myself check my stats for all of June. It’s not that I was wasting a lot of time on it, it’s just that I started feeling embarrassed about it.

NME Stats at May 31, 2010

I started this blog as a way of letting my friends and family know what I’m doing and thinking about, as a way of attracting Reanna’s attention (or someone else just like her), as a way of staying connected with friends and family and recording my history as I made it, they way I used to do with a yearly zine of the same name. I knew that writing my ideas publicly made me think more critically about them, and I liked the idea of living out loud, being the same person to everyone.

I’ve accomplished all these things, and this blog has been my most consistent source of inspiration for the last coming-up-on two years. It’s been great. My excitement over breaking 1,000, though, has got me thinking. Am I also trying to be famous?

To be clear, I don’t think I’m getting famous by writing this blog. It’s just making me think and feel about it. Even if I keep this pace up, 1,082 views is only about 34 per day, and I posted almost every day this month. I get a few people I don’t know finding the blog with search engine terms that I’ve written about, like “schizophrenia diagnostic criteria” or “are anti-inflammatories bad for you,” but most of my traffic comes directly here, on purpose. I imagine that means that there are maybe 40 folks who read this fairly regularly, and that’s easily accounted for by family and friends from school and Not Back to School Camp.

Still, 1,000 views means a lot more people are reading my writing  than they were two years ago, and that number could keep going up. My friend Jeannie recently beat 6,000 views and I thought, “Wow, that would be cool!” But there’s no way 6,000 views are all friends and family. A blog with 6,000 views is beginning to hit the public sphere–almost 200 a day. That’s not fame either, of course, but I bet those numbers keep going up, and maybe I could get there too, and I’m feeling a little tension about it.

Part of the tension is aesthetic. My aesthetic ideal of fame is from my music and record production career: I’d like to become just famous enough that fans of my kind of music are waiting for my next project, but not famous enough to get recognized on the street.

I’ve always felt comfortable with that picture, but now I’m becoming a therapist, and it appears that the therapist-fame aesthetic is different. My supervisors tell me that I should be unfindable–no public phone numbers, websites, etc. Clients should not be able to contact me except through the clinic, and they definitely shouldn’t be able to find out about my personal life. I can see the wisdom in that, but I don’t want to do it. I can make my phone, myspace, and facebook private, but I’ve got this blog and my band’s website, plus I show up on other websites that I prefer to be publicly affiliated with, like Not Back To School Camp, my swing dance group ELLA, and my family‘s music sites.

Another part of the aesthetic tension is about transparency. I have to be one person to everyone on this blog. Being the same person to everyone is an ideal for me but makes me uncomfortable. I have psychology-research friends, therapy friends, and co-counseling friends, all of whom would be distressed to some degree to learn how deeply involved I am in each field. My atheist friends can see that when I say I am agnostic, I really mean it. I’m not a hedging-my-bet atheist. I think about God a lot and take the idea seriously. My religious friends will see that I mock fundamentalism pretty regularly. And so on. The more well-known I get, the less I get to show people the parts of me I think they will like and hide the parts I think they won’t like.

And then there is the ethical aspect of fame. In a way, the better known I am, the better off my friends and family are–the more traffic I can drive to our businesses by mentioning them, the bigger audience I’ll have built for books I write or records I make. I can also bring more attention to worthy causes, potential problems, things like my Headlines From Psychology, that people would be better off knowing. The more fame, the more impact. A famous Nathen would be a stronger force for good. If I do say so.

On the other hand, the extent of my fame also forces transparency onto my friends and family, and they don’t all share my aesthetic preference for transparency. I didn’t really get this as an ethical issue until Reanna asked me not to use her last name on the internet. She wants to control what people can find out about her, and who doesn’t? I regularly tell people who video me dancing, “No YouTube!” But it didn’t even occur to me to ask the friends and family I’ve written about whether I could use their full names, or even post their photos. I’ve been considering starting that project soon. I like using full names, talking about real, specific people. So and so said such and such. This, however, a big reason Kerouac died friendless. I guess ethics trumps aesthetics.

[Oh! Here’s my opportunity to make that project easier for myself. If I’ve used your name (or if it seems likely that I will) in NME, please email me your preference: last name or no last name.]

I wrote most of this in early June, not knowing if I my views would continue spiking. It turns out they did not. At the end of June I’m almost exactly where I was at the end of May. I suppose it’s possible that staying level is an achievement, though, since I posted almost every day in May but only every other day in June. I’ve also lost a good deal of my both excitement and tension about my stats, though I still check them every day. Maybe it’s having watched them level off again. I’m tempted to start posting every day again to see if I can get another spike, but I think I’d rather post even less frequently and give myself time for more thoughtful essays. I’ll keep you updated.

 

May 6, 2010

Not Back to School Camp: A Glance Within

Posted by Nathen under Allen Ellis, Blake Boles, blogging, Maya, Not Back to School Camp, photography, video
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Every year I work at a summer camp for home- and unschooled teenagers, Not Back to School Camp. This will be my twelfth year–thirty some sessions. It is usually the highlight of my year. An NBTSC alumni, Allen Ellis, made this video about it in 2009. Maya posted it on her blog a couple of months ago, and I’m copying her. In moments like this I really wonder who it is that reads my blog. I suspect you are 97% my family and NBTSC friends, who have already seen this. Oh well. This is for the other 3%, whose names are mostly David, Ceri, and Emily.

The guy in the still shot that heads the video is my friend Blake Boles. Every time I see this shot I wonder if Allen asked his permission to use it like that. It’s a funny one.

 

September 28, 2009

I’m Back From NBTSC and About to Start Grad School

Posted by Nathen under Couples and Family Therapy, Not Back to School Camp, school
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I got back from Vermont and Not Back to School Camp last night and spent today scurrying to get ready for the start of my term. I’m doing a masters in Couples and Family Therapy, starting tomorrow. I’ll do a year of theory (lots of lectures, reading, and writing) and then a year of practice. I’ll be taking clients next summer. Here’s the list of classes for the first term, with the descriptions provided by the program:

Research Methods Research strategies, statistics, and techniques relevant to the field of family therapy provide evaluative skills for interpretation of statistical data, qualitative and quantitative research methods and the bi-directional continuum for research design.

Introduction to Family Therapy Overview of the major models and methods of systemic counseling as they have evolved in the field of family therapy. Application of systemic therapy models to assessment and treatment protocol for common presenting problems.

Family Theory A study of the major theoretical orientation and general theories relevant to the study of the family including exchange theory, symbolic interaction, general systems approach, conflict and phenomenology.

Gender and Ethnicity Introduction to thinking critically about clients’ and therapist’s group memberships and identifications, and the effects of these on the therapeutic relationship and interventions. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding both enduring and changing human diversity contexts through the use of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model and genograms as both assessment and intervention techniques.

 

August 23, 2009

I’m Off to NBTSC 2009

Posted by Nathen under community, Not Back to School Camp, unschooling, work
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I’m about to leave for five weeks at Not Back to School Camp, so I won’t be posting for a while. It’s one of my favorite times of year. NBTSC is a camp for teenage unschoolers, or autodidacts. What they do for their education varies a lot but it tends to be a kind of homeschooling, where the learning is interest-led and non-coercive. The campers are amazing people–creative, open, intelligent, fun. There are about 100 of them at each session, and there are four sessions this year, two in southern Oregon and two in Vermont. (I’m missing the fourth session this year, much to my dismay–it’s my second session missed in ten years. My graduate program starts before the 4th session ends.) My job is basically to be available to them. I teach workshops, this year on Lindy Hop, the scientific method, and the human bowel movement (based on the in-some-ways-dated but still cool little book, Man’s Presumptuous Brain). I’m doing a music project, too, where the teens that sign up will learn to play together in a band and we’ll write a piece of music to perform for the camp. The staff is amazing, too. They are mostly old friends of mine, now, and a pretty tight and very loving community. I’ve had a great day seeing them again on my breaks from packing.

Have a great rest of your summer, everyone!

 

October 9, 2008

Goals and Intentions for Year 37, Plus Outcomes

Posted by Nathen under Abandon Ship, being kind to myself, dancing, goals/intentions, Grace Llewellyn, lists, meditation, Not Back to School Camp, songwriting, Taber Shadburne
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Sing everyday: This is I did, minus maybe ten days. It was one or two songs a day, usually. This was enough to keep up my singing voice, but not enough to improve it, as I had hoped.

Dance everyday: This I did as well, minus a few sick days. I put the number of minutes I danced on my daily graphing-my-life/training chart, which shows that I danced an average of 54.41 minutes a day. My dancing really improved. I went to two Balboa camps, two Lindy Hop camps (“camps” are weekend-long dance marathons with classes all day and dances all night), one Lindy exchange (like a camp without the classes), took tap dancing classes all year, took a series class for Soul Motion, taught by Grace Llewellyn, and worked for hours at home on Balboa, Charleston, Melbourne Shuffle, clown walk, and just boogying.

Meditate every day: I think I might have missed once or twice. I kept track but lost my excitement for number crunching after analyzing my dance time. It looks like I averaged between 15 and 20 minutes. Meditation is not nearly as enjoyable as dancing for me but I’m glad to have sat every day. The benefits seem to come from regular practice.

Make a fourth Abandon Ship record: This I did not do. Abandon Ship is the band I have with two of my brothers, Damian and Gabriel. I did write arrangements for a couple of Damian’s new (and really good) songs and I wrote a bridge for another. I also spent a couple weeks in Joshua Tree this summer, writing and recording three more songs with him. It’s an ongoing project.

Continue to master being kind to myself: This is a project I started two years ago, with the help of my friend, Taber. It’s definitely worth a blog entry of its own, but simply put, I realized that there was a way that I am habitually not on my own side, and I began to practice continually realigning myself toward compassion and kindness for myself. It’s a major shift in my tectonic plates, as Taber says. This project is going really well.

Walk slowly: This has been great. This has been my favorite. I noticed that I walk as if I’m in a hurry, even if there’s no reason to hurry. I’d like to think I was emulating my fast-walking Grandpa Bob, but I think I just kept myself so busy for so long that I forgot about strolling. Walking slowly is wonderful. I love it.

Have a flexible back and hips: I did downward dog and plow poses plus a few other physical therapy exercises most nights between my birthday and the end of June. I improved my back and hip flexibility noticeably, though not as much as I’d hoped. I also stopped wearing a backpack after more than 15 years of schlepping, which I think helped. I started getting comments from friends that my posture had improved. Then I traveled all summer, basically camping in somewhat hectic circumstances: helping friends move and working at Not Back to School Camp, mostly. Traveling makes a nice, relaxing evening stretching routine a challenge. Anyway, I still have some of the flexibility I gained but I can’t say that I have a flexible back or hips right now. I’m not even sure that I could have said that in June, actually.

Overall I think I did well this year, both in setting good goals and in following through. I like the simplicity of the list. It’s got a nice compact aesthetic. I’m both inspired and daunted by my list for this coming year but it’s not as nice to look at.

 

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