Some of you will know I've just been away for the weekend and was recovering from some sickness.
I self-medicated my tonsillitis a bit with garlic, and gargling salt with apple cider vinegar.
Before I get to talking a little about my festival experience, I've been reading up more on education and filling some knowledge gaps.
Following my last education post, I wanted to go a bit deeper into the history of education and where we can look to improve the way we educate each other in traditional environments.
Since, I've read this paper on the Montessori Method, an educative program for children designed by Italy's first female doctor.
I'd heard about Montessori schools in books like The Rise of Superman by Steven Kotler, a book about flow states and creating effective environments for learning and productivity.
So I will be doing a bit of a write up on Montessori, didactic teaching and experiential learning, since I lack understanding of where healthy balance between structured and open learning lives.
But for now..
Me getting gifted a beanie by someone who came in, so many loving people at The Town.
The weekend at The Town was incredible.
However, my lack of photos demotivates me to write much about it; and I also don't know what I would say.
The Town was built in 3 days and hosted incredible artists, performers and attendees. There was a stage on a boat, an idea station where people could collaborate on ideas against major societal issues and each suburb where attendees lived was themed - so people had custom letter boxes and campsites.
Honestly, for me it was a difficult festival. I was torn between having fun, being really tired and being a bit overwhelmed.
The Town itself was beautiful and the people were lovely. However, I often found myself wandering around alone; and in a place full of so much love, it was so evident that this was a choice of mine.
I don't know if there are any serial loners out there, who distance themselves from social groups often to spend time with themselves, or with new people.
It's this selfish act and sometimes people find it rude; and I know that I can push myself through it, but I often choose not to. Despite this being my own choise, sometimes it really gets me down, especially if I can't connect with what excites me.
"Why do I want to be alone?"
"Why don't I spend time with people?"
"Why aren't you funny enough?"
"Why don't I stop caring how people perceive me?"
"Why the fuck are you still holding on to such pointless things?" It's beautiful out here
And honestly, as dramatic as all the negative why questions were for me (because I was experiencing them), really I just felt I didn't dress up enough and wasn't giving enough back to the town.
This low self-worth spiral threw me into a slightly narcissistic cycle for a while, and it just made me want to seperate myself from everyone completely - I felt like a disease and a manipulator and I hated it.
People would ask me questions about my life, to which I normally brush off since the answers are uncertain as I'm often indecisive - instead, I would answer, because I wanted the attention because I felt alone.
But I knew that the person I was attracted these exact interactions, so I spun myself out, probably just really tired and needing some friends.
Regardless, it was a great festival and I had the opportunity to meet and bond with a lot of incredible people. As a volunteer I also played a part in maintaining what it was, even if I was just on a ladder cleaning TP up from the gym, or delivering messages between stalls.
On night 1, there was a ball in the gymnasium where people would roller-skate/blade and then we would all have a dance off. On the 3rd morning, I went for a swim with someone I met in the freezing river on site (naked), so it was pretty hippy-ish, you know.
It was a really incredible festival - people mostly cleaned up after themselves which made the workers and volunteers jobs much easier during the pack-down. And I definitely want to head back again, perhaps with a camera so I can commit to proper content creation around the event, but I'm not sure if I want to commit myself to this, perhaps there's a balance.
Thank you for reading! I appreciate you! If you appreciated any of this or would like to see something else from me, let me know by reaching out in the comments!
See you around!