You Can Be Hopeful AND Exhausted

At the end of a tough summer at camp, or even an average summer at camp (because I think our average summers would be impossible for most people and our tough summers are almost incomprehensible to non-camp folk), there is a question that starts creeping in.

Can I do this thing again?

And usually, when we ask ourselves that question, we start trying to determine something immediately:  Am I exhausted?  Or have I actually reached my limit?  Truly.

I think one of the mistakes we make is believing we need to know the answer to that right away.  We can sometimes think that there is one state of being.  Either I am hopeful about this work.  Or I am exhausted by it.  Either I still love camp.  Or I am done.  Either this was meaningful.  Or it was too much.  But human beings do not really work like that.

You can be hopeful AND exhausted.  You can love camp and desperately need a break from camp.  You can believe deeply in the work and also wonder whether you are the person who should keep doing it.  You can have had an incredible summer and still be completely depleted.

All of those things can be true at the same time.  So maybe the first thing you need to do before deciding whether you can do another summer is:

Take the big nap.

Seriously.  Take the big nap first.  Regulate your nervous system a little bit.  Eat something that did not come out of a camp kitchen.  Maybe sleep in a room where nobody is going to knock on your door (or more likely summon you via your walkie) because someone lost their inhaler, the power went out in the arts and crafts cabin, or there is an unidentified animal living under the porch.

Give yourself a minute.

Meditate on the value that camp has brought you and the beautiful things you get to experience.  Wait until you can reconnect with the part of your brain where the immediate irritation of every little thing that happened this summer no longer feels like a source of deep stress.

Including the day someone took the last package of ketchup.  Because when it happened?  That might have felt like the final straw.  But after a little rest, and a little distance it might not sting so bad.  In fact, one day-God willin’ and the crick don’t rise- it might even be (dare I say…) funny.

And I think there is wisdom in waiting for that shift.  Because what I am suggesting is not that your eventual answer will definitely be:  Of course I can do another summer! Camp forever!

It might not be.  Your answer may still be:  I cannot do this again.  Or:  I need to do this somewhere else.  Or:  I love camp, but I do not love what this particular version of camp requires from me.  Those can be healthy answers.

I am simply saying:  Make that decision from self, not from fatigue.

Hope can make us move too fast, too.

There is another version of this.  Maybe you finish the summer and you are FIRED UP.  You know exactly what you want to change.  You are already rebuilding the schedule.  You are reorganizing staff training.  You have opened the spreadsheet.  Actually, you have opened seventeen spreadsheets.  You are going full steam on redesigning the schedule for every color group from now until 2091.

That is hope too.

And I love that energy.  LOVE. THAT. ENERGY.

But unless you work at camp in some faraway magical place where everyone gets nine hours of sleep every night and every meal is perfectly tailored to your personal GI tract...

Girl… You need a break.

Your body might not be saying it now.  It might still be running on the adrenaline of closing day, evaluations, reunions, staff goodbyes, and everything you are convinced you absolutely must fix before anyone forgets what happened.

But your body will remember.  Maybe in February.  Right when you need to be gearing up again for the next big show. Hope does not mean you have unlimited capacity.  Sometimes the most hopeful thing you can do for next summer is stop working on it for a little while.

Here is how I know when I am really depleted.

I have learned something about myself over the years.  The clearest sign that I am completely depleted is when I become unable to envision a better situation within the current framework of my experience.  Let me explain.

When I can no longer see a pathway forward, in life, at camp, in a job, or inside an organization, I know something important is happening.

As long as I can imagine possibilities, there is usually still something in me that can engage.  Maybe there is another way.  Maybe we can change the system.  Maybe we can have the conversation.  Maybe we can try something new.  Maybe the things that happened this summer do not have to happen next summer.

But when I can no longer realistically see things changing?  When every possible path feels closed?  When I cannot imagine anything getting better?  When my personal purpose isn’t met by the organizational structure, that is usually a sign that I am depleted enough that I am no longer able to be an effective staff member, leader, collaborator, or community member in that place.

And that knowing is the most important sign that it is time to go.

Because until that point, hope is often the thing that gets us through all the chaos that is summer camp.  Hope that you are making a difference.  Hope that what you are doing will have a ripple effect on the campers you are serving.  Hope that those campers might take what they learned about belonging, courage, friendship, or kindness back into the rest of the world.  Hope that maybe, in some tiny way, the work you are doing might help make the world a kinder place for all of us.

And then there are the smaller hopes.  Hope that your boss will stop assigning things at 4:47 on Friday afternoon.  Hope that the meeting you have next week will magically become a very clear email.  Hope that the kitchen has enough ketchup packets.  Hope that the weather app is wrong.

There are the big hopes and the little hopes.  The sky high dreams and the minuscule victories.  But both rely on hope to keep you in the game.

And when hope is truly gone, not tired, not irritated, not “I hate everyone and need three days alone,” but genuinely gone, I think we need to pay attention.  Because once you can no longer imagine yourself moving toward something better, staying is not automatically the brave or loyal choice.  Sometimes staying actually means you are no longer serving your own purpose or the purpose of the organization.

And sometimes the healthiest choice for both of you is to make a different one.

I have been there.

I have watched a place I loved become something that no longer served me.  That was hard.  And I think one of the hardest pieces was recognizing that nobody had to be the villain.  They were not bad.  I was not bad.  We were just no longer a good match for each other's needs.  That is such a difficult thing to accept when you love a place.

We like clean stories: I left because they were terrible.  I stayed because everything was wonderful.

But the truth is always infinitely more complicated than that.  Sometimes you change.  Sometimes the organization changes.  Sometimes your needs become clearer.  Sometimes you realize the life required by a particular role is not the life you want to live anymore.

That does not erase what the place gave you.  It does not erase what you gave the place.  It just means something changed.  And if you plan on things always staying the same…  boy do I have news for you.

You don't have to decide right now.

That might be the thing I most want a tired camp person to hear in September.  You don't have to decide right now.  You can rest first.  Beauty might creep back in.  You might sleep for a while, eat some farmer’s market vegetables, binge watching something stupid, stop wearing the same four T-shirts, reconnect with the people you barely saw all summer, and suddenly remember:

“Oh.  That was beautiful.  I did love that.  Maybe I can do it again.”

And maybe that will not happen. You might feel exactly the same way on October 10th that you feel right now.  Maybe the beauty does not come creeping back.  Maybe the distance confirms what your exhaustion was already trying to tell you.

That might be sad. It might be freeing… and maybe (actually probably) it will be both.

But you will know a little more.  And that’s a really important part of that moment between one summer and the next.  Because ultimately you will have to ask AND answer the question:  Can I do this again?

And like every other summer when you have asked that question before, there is something that will definitely be true.  And that is..  Whatever decision you make will be the one you made.

And as long as you make that decision with intention, as long as you think about your needs as a whole person and not just as a camp professional, I think you can trust yourself.  So when the time is right, make that decision with your whole chest.  Because camp, at baseline, takes conviction.  So being able to commit, with purpose, is essential.

Staying will be hard.  Going will be hard.  Changing roles will be hard.  Starting somewhere new will be hard.  There probably is not a magical option that makes everything easy.

Sometimes you just have to decide:  Which hard most aligns with how I want to live in the world?

But maybe don't decide that tonight.  Tonight, you might just be exhausted.  And exhausted people deserve rest before they are asked to design the rest of their lives.

Take the big nap.

Then see what hope has to say.