> Reading about everyone else's summer experiences made me realise that I never posted anything about mine. I also realised how my summer was ultimately very disappointing.
>
> Originally it seemed that my summer might be far too full but then many of my plans fell through and I was left doing nothing, or rather what seemed like nothing. It was supposed to be a nice quiet summer. Just me and my family, occasional visits with friends, a few barn chores, and an occasional short trip. Unfortunately everything kind of blew up.
>
> I don't remember what order all this happened (or didn't happen) in so this is likely out of order.
>
> (family)
> My dad got a "real job". As long as I remember he's been at home most of the time. Farmer types get to do stuff like take random breaks in the middle of the morning to talk to their kids and convince them that life isn't really falling apart. I've needed this quite a lot this summer. I don't know what I'll do now that he's not around so much anymore.
> The job he got was actually made up especially because the people that he's now working for wanted to hire him. He was/is pretty excited about it all. D(that's what I call him)'s job was actually originally connected to the selling the farm bit but it doesn't look like that's going to happen anymore. I guess that's a positive aspect of this anyway.
>
> (friends)
> To understand this you likely need to know something about my church Youth Group (aka the Youth types). The group is for highschool students grades 9-13. We have adult leaders and meet officially once a week.
> I think it must have been the adult leaders that started the trouble with youth group. There were geting to be a few too many of them (form my opinion anyway) and they seemed to have a lot of meetings behind closed doors. Last year I suddenly became one of the older youth (being in grage 12). Those older than me and even the one other person my age were not very active in the group.
> Around this time I started attending a christian group at my school. I was very impressed. They had one adult leader but only because it was required by the school that they have adult supervision. All of the activities were run by the youth themselves. The more I became involved with this new group the more my old youth group began to bother me. The heavy leader involvement was the frist thing that got on my nerves. Why did the leaders have to have their secret meetings before each night of Youth? The next thing was the seeming lack of substance in the tuesday night lessons. It didn't seem that we were ever taught anything new or got any deeper than we had before. It became very frustrating
> I realized now that this was the reason that those older than me chose not to participate very much in the group. There is a flaw somewhere in the way the group is run that frustrates the older youth until they cut themselves off from the group in one way or another. I felt like quitting all together
> I didn't want to quit though, for several reasons. Most importantly, the youth group has been my social life for a while now. Everywhere I go and everytime I do something with friends its usually the Youth types. I didn't want to lose that just because I could no longer sit though regular meetings without difficulty. I also felt a kind of debt to the group. I can see how the influence of people in the group in years ahead of me positively influenced my current character. I felt somehow obligated to stick around to be the same thing to those younger than me.
> Unfortunatly I think I have indeed lost my youth group. I'm looking for a new one, I guess, and I hope to continue to go to my old one sporadically. I've found that as the new school year has started there doesn't seem to be any place for me there at all anymore.
>
> (other friends related stuff that I don't want to get in to here)
>
> (barn chores)
> My barn chores were boring an island of stability. I was hoping to get a summer job which would make me a trifle more money but it all worked out in the end.
>
> (occasional trips)
> I spent 14 hours in a van with 11 perfect strangers on my way to a youth convention where there were 1800 more perfect strangers. Somehow I found myself recognising many of them. It was interesting the way I found myself accepted although I knew no one. I don't think I ate a meal all by myself even once in the four days I was there. Unfortunately I didn't have the amazing spiritual experience that I had hoped for and many people there did have. Instead I had a disturbing run in with someone who nearly ruined my weekend. (I don't really want to outline exactly what happened. At least not in this post)
>
> I was looking forward to going back to school but I've found myself feeling flat far too often in the last week or so. (Flat what I call an odd and uncomfortable mental and emotional state that I sometimes find myself in which involves everything seeming kind of two dimensional.) I'm hoping that writing this will help. I know that talking to someone usually does.
>
> Rivi "It all seems too simple in black and white" kah

Here's my analysis:
You're are a smart, caring person. You make friends easily. You are very normal. Everybody has good and bad stuff in their lives. The trick is to enjoy the good and don't dwell on the bad. Next summer is likely to be better.
How's that for keeping it brief?
Howard