Hello dearest shining muffin pies! As you likely know, A-Camp starts in just two days — which is why some of us are sitting on our couch drinking white wine and eating our favorite weird snack (potato chips + dates) and feeling sorry for ourselves right now. There’s plenty of room though, so come snuggle up! Here, have a chip.
We all have our reasons for missing A-Camp. Mine is a two-parter:
- I live in Berlin, Germany, which is kind of a far/expensive distance away. I moved here almost exactly three years ago for work, and I think about that Joan Didion quote from Goodbye to All That a lot: “I would stay in New York, I told him, just six months, and I could see the Brooklyn Bridge from my window. As it turned out the bridge was the Triborough, and I stayed eight years.”
- I’m actually going to New York next week to watch a dear friend get husbanded up, and I booked the flights half a year ago because British Airways was having a sale and I didn’t know then that it would conflict with my potential maiden voyage to Mount Feelings. It is a lesson in many things re: advance planning and air travel, but I also haven’t been back to the East Coast in many moons and I have some long distance besties whose faces I desperately need to see. I am also super excited to eat proper bagels and spend at least three hours in a Target.
Everyone loves to talk about FOMO on a Saturday night, living-your-best-party-life, level but lately I’ve been thinking about it on a time and distance level. It’s something I struggle with when it comes to being far away from so many people I love. For example it was my best friend’s birthday this week and even though I made a stellar photo collage of her in various states of eating/drinking, it didn’t help me shake this feeling that I am missing — and have missed — so much. For me, one of the more challenging lessons I haven’t yet learned is how to reconcile this memory of what everything was like when you left a place (shiny, rose-tinted) and how inevitably you can never go back to that, even when you do go back.
With A-Camp, since I’ve never been before, I technically don’t know how much fabulousity I’m missing out on but in a way I do still know, you know? We all still know! And social media helps/hurts with that, but I wanna talk queer talk and learn queers learnings and make shit and see everyone’s #METGALA finery, IRL. I want faces in front of my face, and to hear everyone’s voices and how they laugh and find out who gets freckles on their noses from being in the sun.
FOMO like whoa.
Ok so now I’m gonna pour myself another glass of wine and you’re gonna tell me all about your own personal FOMOs. What are you doing to cope with not being at A-Camp? What is your favorite comforting weird snack? How do you stay close to your besties that are far away? Do you wanna hang out in a Target with me for three hours? Did you go to A-Camp last year and have some photos you wanna share? Will you also be stalking the AS Instagram for signs of Cameron Esposito?! I just opened a new bag of chips. Get at me.
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