It’s late at night on a Sunday. Work at my employment starts again tomorrow. The several days at Porto after Jesscamp had been, psychologically or emotionally, a smooth come-down from the heighted state of being at Jesscamp, but still, it was packed with action: socialising every day, and also with a bit of ordinary tourism also mixed in. I feel like if I don’t write something right now, it’s simply not going to happen – look what happened with Whorehole – it’s been 6 months, and did the passing of time really gave me more opportunities or motivation to actually “go back in time” and try to remember what my mind was on, and write something post-hoc? Jesscamp 4 stuff has to be now.

Expectations

Following Whorehole (Feb 2025), I have been mentally mostly really calm. When April turned into May, and my schedule still felt packed, and I still felt as uncertain about going to the US for Vibecamp as ever, at some point I decided that, hey, best to do one thing well than two things poorly. So I decided to bail from trying to go to Vibecamp. At the same time, I basically therefore decided to go to Jesscamp – I would like to meet tpot friends, before it would have been too long. A bunch of stuff has happened in my life in the meantime (Feb-July 2025), and quite a few of them were good things! So I just wanted to hang out in general, basically a vibe-check on myself: do my Twitter friends (and their friends) still basically perceive (and on a good day, also accept) me the way they used to? Did I change in unrecognizable ways?

I wasn’t super eager for various workshops. In the end I joined quite a few, but the way how Whorehole felt – with few workshops, at most ~2 per day for me – I think I would be having a good time anyway by just enjoying the presence of my friends, old and new. Later as it turned out, it was indeed the case.

However, as preparation for Jesscamp, I tried to be mindfully intentional, the way in which I prefer to do things nowadays, and so I tried to come up with “questions that I bring with me to Jesscamp”, so that during various conversations, I would see if I can stumble upon answers to them. My two questions are:

How do I make work work for my life?
- This is a question around stuff like “work life balance”, “finding meaning in work”, burnout, anxiety, and various other related things.
In interpersonal relationships, how could I notice, accept, and describe my desires?
- Noticing, accepting, and describing desires in general is already hard enough as it is, e.g. when dealing with inanimate objects. I find it doubly hard when the desire (if any) in question relates to another person other than myself. The consequences of such desire is so, so complicated. Or at least that’s how it feels anyway.
- This question is equivalent to “What do you want from this relationship?”

I don’t think I have time to talk more about what my current answers are to these questions; but suffice to say: I don’t think I found any “breaking” insight. Fair enough – I was just passively watching out for answers, instead of actively trying to drive my conversations with people in that direction.

If anything: during this Jesscamp, I have been very relaxed and simply allowing encounters and discussions to happen, without actively seeking anything in particular.

Energy levels: a direct correlation to my camp experience

It might be a bit egoistic – or is it simply awareness of one’s own condition? – some times/days during (or before/after) camp, I felt more annoyed, more anti-social, more questioning myself, more depressed, compared to the other times. The “lower” times are 95%+ related to how well-rested and well-fed etc. I was. If I had at least 6 hours of sleep, and plentiful nutrition, then it seems like being in the presence of other Jesscampers felt simply very comfortable.

“Care” has long been a theme around this part of Twitter – or, perhaps anyway part of my mind and my life over the past 12 months or so. To me it has been gradually more obvious that, if I take care of myself “first”, and then not only need less support from my friends, but also sometimes have some spare resources with which to help my friends, then everyone is better off. Indeed, there has been a small episode (insert link to external reading) during camp, in which I feel like I really played a role of being a supportive friend – which is a new experience for me, because usually I felt like an imposter, but this time it felt real. I even shed a couple of tears in the presence of my friend, when thinking about the unpleasant/sad circumstances that they found themselves facing.

With the idea that it’s helpful and kind-hearted to my friends that I take care of myself and put myself into a more health state of being, I have been genuinely pretty relaxed and ok with spending time alone, for resting, digesting (either food or ideas), on one or two ocassions even working out. This remained true post-camp, in Porto. (Sidenote: it however doesn’t feel so easy to manage in “everyday life”: the mission feels either different or more difficult, when there isn’t any timeframe with a definitive-ending.)

New friendships: repeated encounters, remixed contexts

The repeated encounters really helped. In the beginning, e.g. during some workshops I did attend, it wasn’t particularly meaningful to me exactly who was in them, because I basically didn’t know many of them (or that they didn’t know me). However, as time/camp went on – and I especially felt this on the final evening of camp on Sunday night – I noticed the same people taking part in different contexts. Suddenly, little observations from earlier that didn’t mean anything at the time suddenly all made sense. Suddenly (or gradually?), personalities take shape.

I am very thankful for all the trust and goodwill that I have received, seemingly purely based on social-proof, namely that “Eason is someone who is known by at least some of your trusted friends”. I didn’t feel like I did anything weird, unique, or intentional/conscious. I felt most of the time as under-educated, illiterate (i.e. not getting the references that people invoke), incompetant (i.e. when there is a new project, I basically don’t have energy to actually carry out any help). I imagine what “keeps people coming” is probably just some kind of cheap aspect about my personality that comes across as positive – which is funny, unexpected, and really quite ironic: I can easily be an annoying person. I can easily be bitter, angry, depressed, snarky, passive-aggressive, selfish, unempathetic. Some (perhaps even “many”) of you might have experienced that online before. I certainly feel that, as nice as all the new connections are, they are built on shaky ground: I still have that classic feeling that, if and when I am “more-properly seen”, people would be put-off or scared-away. Maybe the fact that I’m staying-up late night (it’s now 03:20; and I’ve been sufficiently sleepy to sleep since about 01:30) to write this has an effect on my thoughts. This kind of self-assessment certainly feels outdated, and “familiar”, since it has been there for so long, quite some time ago. I however do feel it in the present too.

During the circling workshop, there was a comment by me that apparently came as such a surprise to some ~half of the group, that after people voiced their care for me, I felt more disconnected from them. That was true; i.e. that was how I felt, even if not strongly, or even though with reservations. When people voice more care than I’m convinced that they’ve seen me, it’s as if their care is not for me, but a ray of unilateral intention that is shot right through me, without me being any kind of a relevant or non-fungible target. I felt like the care had nothing to do with me: “Do you even know me? What do you even care about?”. In the circling workshop, I didn’t say more, because it wasn’t the right forum/format for it; afterwards, I also didn’t say more, because, lol, who would be happy/interested to hear such untrusting/cold remarks?

As camp went on, without the explicit voicing of care, I’ve actually felt a lot more seen, in many scenarios. E.g. one new friend, when walking past me, altered their path to come talk to me, to tell me that observing me eat has been inspiring, and that they also took the time to feed themselves well. In moments like this (especially when food is involved – yes it’s so cliche and so obvious, but it’s also so true and so powerful), I felt very seen. I felt understood. I trust that in the other person’s mind, I am truly no longer a random person. “Care” was never here explicitly uttered or expressed, but the existence of care is to me obvious, unquestionable, and precious and enjoyable.

More on this later

Well, I did managed to maintain some semblance of a journal, in a quality/quantity/structure similar to ordinary days, so I do have some record of what I’ve been up to, and little nuggets of interactions I’ve had, enjoyed, and remembered. It would be fun, and a good mental exercise, to let my mind wander and recall various little nuggets and scenes of interactions – but it feels like such a luxury: to simply relax and let my mind wander? Oh no, my mind is a workhorse, and it is suffering under the heavy load of “daily life”, barely staying afloat, barely managing to complete just enough of the tasks and missions needed to keep my life “going” (and “ok” in general). Here I’m just trying to wrap up this blogpost into something semi-reasonable.

We can hope that I’ll write something more – that I would have/find the time to actually relax, to actually listen to my mind do its work, and let the little moments resurface. Perhaps, on a good day, with just the right wind, I might even be able to go back in time and write something about Whorehole too – it was also something that made a nebulous/intangible, but really quite believable, impact on my life. I have experienced and learnt so much from, and from my interactions with, my dear friends in tpot. When I’m offline and when you’re not seeing me, I am still thinking, and looking for ways in which I could do things in my IRL life and social circles a little bit in the style of tpot: agentic, with care, contemplative, embodied, ambitious.

A word on identities, from Eason

There’s an alt problem. The problem is that I need an alt. Not all content is for everyone – some that’s fun/insightful for some could be unpleasant for others. However, an alt is truly an alternative persona. Who am I? When am I “Eason”? I have received warm, loving words from some fellow Jesscampers that, they love that I am Eason and they would love for me to be as Eason as I would be. (“Be yourself” etc., and “individuation”.) If I create an alt and pour some of my heart/ideas into it, would I become “less-Eason”? This matter of identity is also something I’m experimenting with, and having complicated thoughts on, IRL: I’ve been trialing a new (additional, not replacement) name. Perhaps with most things: you just gotta try it out and see how it goes.