A Postmortem Reflection On My State Of Being After Festival

This past week has been wild. A lot of work and effort was put in by a lot of people to make this event happen. I was a Production Assistant this year, as I was last year for the same event as well. Now, two points of data aren't much to work with, but taking into account everything I've been feeling for the past two years and using those two points as landmarks to compare makes things better for me to understand.

For most of my life, I've often looked back at some points in my life and wondered things like "How did I do that?" or "Where did the strength to pull that off come from?" to the eventual question of "I was able to do that when I was younger, so now that I'm older and more experienced and stronger, why do those feats seem impossible for me now?" comes out to an answer. I am not what I seem to myself. Where I was leading up to, during, and after the music festival last year compared to this year is like night and day for lack of a better metaphor. Despite getting new shoes and thinking most of my pain had gone, last year put my foot through the wringer. I was still at the same level of productivity, only with less pain. Even after, my eyes were merely opened to see I was no different when I overexert myself, I had no way of overcoming that.

This past week, I've been in less pain, I've been more productive, I did it on less sleep, and I had more energy the whole time. Not only that, but leading up to the event, I competed in a DDR tournament and even did well, despite thinking a few years ago that I would never be able to play well or close to 100% again, let alone at all. Not to say I've come out unscathed, as I'm showing signs of wear and tear. But, I'm not as damaged as I was last year. I can look at what I did last year, and this year, and say to myself "I can do more and I can go further."

I have come out of this event feeling more resolved in myself. And I will capitalize upon it. I am better than I think I am. I'm stronger than I put faith in. I've long followed a mantra that true strength is not what you can do at your strongest, but what you can do at your weakest and the things you can do casually without thinking about the effort you put into it. So between the two music festivals set apart by one year, I can see my true strength has risen higher. Not that I'm more capable or better enduring or even have a higher limit than before, but simply that I never once considered having a limit this year. What I think I put in was merely a drop compared to the ocean I could have welling up inside. I can go further, and this time, I will.