Getting Lost...

Lost and Found

It has been more than three years since I last made a post on here. I have researched and made rough drafts, but I always find an excuse not to finish them off. It has been a hell of a bumpy, crazy ride. The ironic part is that my last two posts were discussing how rough the year before had been. It was a little eye opening to me to see that I have been struggling to get on path for four years. It was also very disappointing to see that the things I want to lock in and do now, I had already attempted and allowed myself to fail.

In an odd way, this blog has always been calling me. Every couple of months, I check on it and make sure there are no new comments. I am shocked at how many hits it gets, how many people seem to be reading my words, and what the start of my journey was. That has always kept me thinking that I needed to come back to writing, as much for the people who read it as for the good it does me. Writing this was one of the most centering things I had when it was regular part of my life. It helped me form my wants and my deeds into something concrete. Into a thing that I could build upon and grow from. It was, in a way, a foundation that I was able to work with. That's the goal of coming back to this: to make my desires and path concrete, and to use that to manifest the changes I want in my life. 

I don’t know how often I will be posting, but the current plan is once a week. I also intend to pick up with my short posts that were meditations on the Nine Noble Virtues and how I see them fit into my life.

Who am I today?

One of my very first posts was about who I am, so since this is a new beginning, let us start there again.

I am now 36 years old. I have been married to my high school sweetheart for almost 3 years. I am a father of three lovely girls who when this blog started weren’t quite babies, but very close. The thing that takes up the majority of my time right now is that I am the owner of a game store. It's been almost 3 years since I started it (coincidence that my writing gap started at the planning stages of the store?), and I am not going to devote any more of this space to that discussion. The store takes up enough of my time without taking up my blog as well. 

Within the SCA, I have continued to grow as a well-rounded person even if my fighting has dropped off in the last year. I am now a squire to Jarl Ari Tyrbrandr, Duke of Trimaris, and I have had the honour of fighting with his household in four of the last six Gulf Wars. I was recently awarded my Argent Morningstar, which is the first fighting award in Trimaris. Due to outside reasons, I have not been active to my liking within the SCA in about 3 years: my wife and I used to attend 8-10 events a year, but lately we have only been attending 2-3. Hopefully things are stabilizing enough that we can go back to our normal.

Now that I have been in the SCA for 8 or 12 years (depending on how you count) I have a better, or I should say, more accurate idea of what the SCA means to me. Heavy fighting has always been my main focus. This hasn’t changed, the crucible of war fighting is to me as close to Valhalla as we can get while still alive. I now know that I am in my heart of hearts a happy shieldman. There is very little that brings me more joy than being stuck in the middle of a hard press and not giving an inch.

While I don’t get in armour as often as I used to, something I hope to change in the coming months, I still annoy my opponent with many questions about what I am doing wrong or right. My armour time is so little and far between that I feel most of the time all I am doing is relearning lessons that I have lost in the interim. This can be frustrating, but at least it means I am not getting worse!

Beyond fighting, I still love being a herald. I help everyone I can and volunteer at Herald’s Point whenever I have the chance. I have also realized that this blog is part of the SCA, and something that brings me great joy. Research as a whole, the learning of new things, new aspects of what life would have been like in the 10c, is my second biggest focus after fighting.

Where do we go from here?

Now what’s next? Well, that is the hardest part. Right now, I am starting to have time to once again clear my head, at last I see the light and it's like the fog has lifted. From here, I start one building block at a time, creating the lift I want for myself. It took me three years to get the last block in place. Now I can build on it. 

Here are the things that I want to turn into habits over the next six months:

• Working out Monday-Friday every morning.
• Meditation.
• Continue to drop my cell phone time.
• Read more books.
• Get in armour at least once a month to start.
• Write in this blog.

This post has already gone a little longer than I initially wanted, so I am going to go ahead and conclude with that. Keep an eye out every Monday or Tuesday for a new post. Thank you all for ready over the last couple of years.