Jul 05 2024

So, About That Tournament…

Table Of Contents
  1. Fighter Practice
  2. Tournament Day
  3. Overall Feelings
  4. What About Your Goals?
  5. No Dungeons and Dragons For Baelnorn
  6. Final Thoughts

I did another three day Amtgard week, sorta. I went to fighter practice and I did go to the Silvermoon Tournament but I also stopped at Dusk Hollow on Sunday, but only stayed for an hour or so. With only briefly stopping at Dusk Hollow, it only felt like a sorta three days. This blog will mostly focus on Saturday’s tournament and my foam fighting journey. This was a big milestone in that journey. I haven’t fought in a tournament in well over five years.

Fighter Practice

I was looking forward to getting in some foam fighting on Friday and was considering it my warm up for Saturday’s tournament. I was especially looking forward to getting in some work on two stick fighting. Even before I arrived I knew I wanted to take it pretty easy. I’m usually sore the next day and I didn’t want to be sore going into the tournament.

We only did bearpits and as usual we started with single sword. We didn’t go as long as usual with that style as I would have liked. It was relatively short compared to usual. The next style we did was open weapon. Then after about an hour we took a break.

I did not come back after the break though, I ended up stopping for the night, but I didn’t go back home. Not only was I still streaming (you can find the video HERE), I wanted to watch and keep my focused on fighting. I did my best trying to analyze the fighters; trying to figure out any patterns I might find.

I don’t remember any specifics I picked up from doing that but I don’t consider it waisted time. It gave me a chance to exercise that muscle and even if I don’t remember specifics, just making a point to do the activity helps in the long run. The more I do it, the faster I’ll be at figuring out a fighter and that will translate to better fighting.

Tournament Day

The day of the tournament I was less hyped. I didn’t tell anyone at the time, but in the back of my mind, I didn’t want to enter. There was a lot going on in my head, but the main two issues were, one, I was anxious about performing and two, I was worried that I would let myself down, as is usual in tournaments

Still, I made myself go. I had my brother go with me so he could mind the tripod. I didn’t get any time to warm up before the tournament, which is fine for me. No one else really did either. Even while waiting in the back of the line of the bearpit, before my first fight, I had a knot deep in my stomach.

It quickly went away when I started fighting. For this tournament there weas only 10-12 fighters, so it did not bracket to the top 8 like I thought it would. They took the top four.

The First Bearpit – Single Sword

The first category was single sword. the one I expected to do my best in and, it was! I tried not to let my nerves get to me, or hold myself to to high of an expectation for myself.

I had some pretty good fights in single sword. Watching the video back I moved a bit more than I did in April, so there was improvement there. I also had a few chances to show off my sword arm switching skills, which secured me at least two ins all on its own.

Still, after finishing, I didn’t expect to place in the top 4, yet I did. I ended up fighting Valruin in the bracketed part and losing. That left me tied in third place with Ceian. We were unable to do a tie breaker as he had to leave before there was time.

The Second Bearpit – Two Swords

The second category was two swords. I had no expectations heading into this one, other than losing a lot, which happened. My biggest issue was that I forgot I had a second sword. There is one instance with Torg, where I saw him go for a stab, but rather than blocking it and attacking, I only attacked. I didn’t even move my right sword at all. It was dumb.

I did so bad I know I couldn’t have placed in the top 4. In fact, I was so let down with my performance that I didn’t even remember getting any kills, which wasn’t the case. I got two. Still not enough but better than none, which, when looking back, lifted my spirits a little.

The Third Bearpit – Open Weapon

This one was by far the biggest crap shoot. I entered using a war pole. A red weapon about 7 feet long. I haven’t picked one up in just as long as it’s been since I’ve been in a tournament, at least more than five years.

I picked one up a few years ago, just to see how it felt, but I was too physically to weak to use one properly. So I never even tried to use it. To be honest I’m still to weak to use one, but at least now I have the arm strength to move it with purpose. At first it was a bit awkward to wield, I was very unsure of myself, but I got into the rhythm.

I got a few kills in a row and got some cheering from the crowd, it felt pretty good. I didn’t make it into the top 4, but I did get 5th place, not that it mattered for points. Still, it was nice to know I was one kill away from placing.

Watching the video of my fight, It was sad to see how slow my feet reacted to being charged. Still, one fight, I managed to stay calm, blocking the shots as a shield person came running in. It ended as I stepped away while attacking and killed them. That was probably my highlight of the tournament.

Overall Feelings

When I left the park I felt a little disheartened and for no good reason. For me, it’s not hard to turn a positive experience negative. I thought about all the mistakes I made rather than looking at my successes and congratulating myself on how far I’ve come in only a few months.

I went home and watched the video of my fights and I started to feel a little better. I noticed some improvements I hadn’t realized that I had made. Sure I made several mistakes, but I was certainly doing better than I was when I picked up fighting again. Plus I did get into top four of 4 single sword and beat the other half of the people in open weapon.

I did not meet all of the goals, but I did meet enough of them to feel pretty good about the day.

What About Your Goals?

If you read my last blog, you’ll know that I set myself four goals. Some were easy, while others were a long shot. I met three out of four of my goals. The the one I missed, I never really expected to achieve so I don’t feel bad about not getting it.

Goal 1 – The Easy One

The first goal was to enter every category and I succeeded. There was part of me that almost stopped after single sword, but I’m glad I didn’t. I know it sounds silly to have made this goal, but it was necessary to keep myself accountable.

Goal 2 – The Safe Bet

This goal was to get into the top 8 of the tournament. That became harder when it turned into the top 4, yet I managed to do it it! I was only one win away from second place too! We’ll never know if I would have truly been third place or not, but I’d like to think I had a good chance.

Goal 3 – For The Fun Of It

This goal was to use a pole arm for the whole open bracket, which I did! Torg did bring it for me to use and I was thankful. I was worried that I was going to get to tired to complete this goal, but I managed it alright. Picking up the polearm, I could tell lifting weights had had an effect. I still wouldn’t call it light, but it didn’t feel unwieldly.

Goal 4 – The Longshot

I also wanted to place in the top 8 of either open weapon or two swords. I did not succeed in doing so. Well, technically I did, I was number 5 in open, but I don’t consider it really achieving this goal. The bracket was ended up being top 4, so to succeed, I think the spirit of the goal, would mean I needed to be in the top 4.

Yet despite not succeeding here, I’m supremely happy about how well I did using a polearm. I have a long way to go to get back to using it as well as I remember being able to. Still there was palatable progress in my foam fighting journey in that regard.

No Dungeons and Dragons For Baelnorn

Saturday I was going to be running my dungeons and dragons game after park, but sadly it was canceled due to illness. That’s alright though, I knew I was playing in a game the next day, but alas, Sunday morning that game was unavoidably canceled too.

I found out early enough that I thought I could make it to Dusk Hollow. I wanted to say hello to Tiid. I had seen him at the Weapon Master and I said I would stop by some time. So why not now?

It helped that also wanted to get out of the house for a little while. I made it there around 1:30 and hung out for an hour or so. I talked with Tiid for most of the time, when he wasn’t organizing games. Watching everyone have fun was enjoyable, plus Tiid had brought his adorable 7 week old puppy!

Final Thoughts

I did it! I entered the tournament and met my goals! I broke the habit of setting unreal expectations for myself and it feels nice. While I was a bit hard on myself, being so only last a few hours. This is an overall positive!

I thought I was on the right path, for the last several months and this confirmed it. I still have a long way to go. Hell I don’t really have an end point, I just want to keep walking this path and see where it will take me.

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Jun 27 2024

So, I Died A Lot

Table Of Contents
  1. What the Hell is a Schedule Anyways?
  2. The Actual Blog

This blog is organized a little funny. I have this preamble section you can skip if you want. I did write a TLDR at the start if you want to read it. If you’re just here for my blog, you can use the table of contents to skip right to it.

What the Hell is a Schedule Anyways?

TLDR

This section talks about my blog, I thank all of you readers for taking time to read my blog. It warms my heart! I don’t have a schedule, but I will probably post once a month or so. Fighting will be a focus of future blogs, there might be more real talk about depression and anxiety than in the past.

Do I Have a Schedule?

I have absolutely no schedule when it comes to posts on my blog. Those who have been following since before my YouTube times may remember I was posting blogs on nearly each week. That was before the dark times. Since then I’ve been focused mostly on YouTube content. Which has lead to me not posting blogs with any goals in mind or schedule to keep. Keeping that in mind, I was surprised to look back at all my posts since February.

I have posted 6 blogs! For someone who doesn’t care about posting on his blog, that’s a lot of blogs! If I include this one, that’s four months of at least monthly blogs. I was even more surprised, and heart warmingly so, to find that people were taking time out of their lives to read what I had to say. I really must thank all of you who have taken your time to keep up on what I got going on over the years. It is making me revaluate how I view my blog.

Is The Blog Changing?

Does that mean there are going to be goals and a schedule. Absolutely not! Not officially anyways. It does change the blog, in so much that now I know I’m not speaking into the void, or just to a few of you wonderful core readers. I won’t lie, It does make me feel a bit more motivated to want to share my journey in foam fighting and LARP in general.

I’m still going to continue to post whenever the mood strikes me, as before, it’s just now I think that will continue to be, at least, monthly. It turns out it isn’t the blog that is changing, I am the one who is changing. I’m going on a foam fighting journey, It’s been being set up for months in the real world, I’ve lost weight, started walking, my blood sugars are more under control, and my depression has been less frequent. It was the perfect set up for this journey to begin.

For the first time in a long time, I actually have a current on going LARP activity that I’m personally pursuing in real time. A lot of my LARP blogs were about watching other people have fun, now I get to have fun too and it’s exciting. Better yet it gives me the chance to share my journey with you. Writing helps me process what is going on and having this outlet let’s me do that in an engaging way.

What to Expect

So, expect me to continue to use this blog as an outlet. It may get more personal at times, especially when it comes to depression and anxiety hurdles. I think it’s important to be honest, and after watching a recent YouTube with someone talking about their own struggles, reminded me of that. So when it occurs, I may be more frank about it. But it also means you’ll be there to hear about lessons I’ve learned and the succeses I will have.

I will probably post at least once a month. Most likely about how I’ve been doing with fighting, as well as what places I may have gone. I know I have at lest two special events over the next two might that might inspire a bit of wordsmithing. Hopefully at least some of the content will resonate with you.

The Actual Blog

This last weekend I went to Amtgard for three straight days. I went to fighter practice on Friday, my local holding of Silvermoon on Saturday and a Kingdom Level event at Dragons Forge on Sunday. I can away realizing three straight days of Amtgard is a lot easier to handle when it’s not all at a single campout.

What makes this so amazing is that at the start of the weekend I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go once. Well, I knew I was probably going to decide to go to either the Saturday or Sunday event, but I didn’t feel up to it. What I really wasn’t feeling was fighter practice.

The Foam Fighting Journey Continues…

Nothing particularly bad happened leading up to Friday but I was feeling very low energy and just the thought of going to fighter practice was exhausting. I was just mentally and physically opposed to putting in the energy it takes to fight. It’s a horrible feeling.

It’s of course not the first time I’ve felt this way. I’ve felt this way for years, which is one of the reasons I have taken a hiatus from foam fighting for so many years. If it wasn’t for my brother, urging me to go to Fighter practice I’m not sure I would have rallied and found the motivation to go last Friday. I’m glad my brother insisted, because I ended up having a better than expected time.

That Valruin Guy

Despite having a good time, fighter practice was rough. For whatever reason, Valruin, had my number. The last several fighter practices I had figured him out and I beat him single sword more often than not. Not this week, I died, a lot.

I think I have finally fought them enough that I’ve gotten to the point where they have figured ME out and it was frustrating. He managed to learn where to place his sword for my usual return shot after his normal first attack. I realized this pretty faster, but It was hard to adjust my tactics.

Rather than being discouraged, I found it something of a challenge to try to overcome. By the end of the session I was killing him again, but not as much as I was the previous weeks. I think we have have both grown in the past few months and this was just another evolution of that journey.

I’m Getting Better?

I was very frustrated while fighting Valruin and that translated to fighting others this practice. I was dying a lot in general, not that that it should be a surprise when fighting Critias. He even managed to style on me once, but I did manage to punish him for trying that a second time, we had a good laugh over that.

Despite dying as much as I did that day. Apparently I had improved my form and I didn’t even realize it. Critias commented that I was no longer chicken arming one of my normal swings, I’d managed to get into the habitat tucking my elbow in so as not to make it as easy of a target.

I was pretty happy to hear that, it wasn’t something I was specifically working on. In fact, back in the day it wasn’t something that I would normally have done. I think it boiled down to my arm being weaker and feeling like I had to wind up my shot for the extra power. With weight lifting at home, i think my arm and shoulders have strengthened enough that I no longer have the bad form I had had over the last few months.

Is it Tournament Time?

This weekend there is a tournament at my local holding of Silvermoon. It’s a warlords style tournament, so bearpits in to a bracketed tournament. I’m going to enter. This is the first time I will have been in a tournament for many, many years and I’m kind of excited to see how I do.

For the last few months, Torg, who has been sporadically going to fighter practice, has been continually urged me to enter a tournament, at least in the short sword bracket. He thinks I’d do pretty well. I won’t lie, it felt good to be told that, but I didn’t feel I was ready, I’m still not sure if I am.

I have five orders of the warrior. None of them were for winning tournaments, I’m not a good tournament fighter. I get into my head at lot. Not to mention that when I was entering tournaments they were not often bearpits . In theory, a bearpit makes it a lot easier for me to rank up, there is less pressure when it’s not just one fight. In a bracketed tournament, If you lose you are out, if you win you advance. I don’t do well with that pressure.

With a bearpit there is a chance to warm up, to get into the groove. You can fight multiple people you can learn people’s move set, it gives you a chance to fix your mistakes and the pressure to perform is less, at least for me. That really makes this up coming tournament more appealing.

Goals For Saturday

I haven’t really set goals for my fighting, I have a broad set of things I’m working on. I want to continue to improve my skill, I want to continue improving my physical health, I want to continue to train my mind and I’m doing this through going to fighter practice. During each practice, I work on specific areas within those things. Maybe those are goals, in a broad sense, but it doesn’t really feel like it.

This Saturday, at the tournament, I plan to have goals. I was partially inspired to set goals for the tournament after watching a fellow YouTuber’s blog of their recent tournament day (You can watch it HERE).

Goal 1 – The Easy One

I think my first goal is very easy to achieve but very important to list. Enter all three categories, single sword, two swords and open weapon. There is part of me that initially only wanted to enter the single sword as it’s the only style I feel remotely comfortable with at the moment. I don’t currently feel that I will only enter one category, but it’s important list and remember

Goal 2 – The Safe Bet

My Second goal is to make it into the single sword bracket. I wish I had the confidence in my foam fighting to say that the goal is to place in the top 3, but we have some stiff competition at our park, including a warlord that I might have to contend with. That’s not to mention we may get high skill visitors. I’ll be happy enough if I get into the top 8.

Goal 3 – For The Fun of It

This goal is dependent on other people, which I hate to include, but it’s one I really want to do. Fighting with a pole in the open bracket. This will require Torg being present and him brining the pole arm. It’s probably a bad idea, I haven’t used a pole arm in half a decade, but it sounds fun and I want to figure out how far away I am from being fit enough to pick it back up regularly.

Goal 4 – The Longshot

I thought I should also set a goal that is more of an aspiration, something that’s possible, but I consider unlikely. I would like to also place in the top 8 in either two swords or open weapon.

With open weapon I’m banking on the fact that people aren’t used to fighting someone that knows how to use a war pole and hoping I am still someone that knowns how to use a polearm. The biggest issue there, aside from being rusty, is I may not be fit enough to use it for to many fights and it’s a bearpit, so there is that.

With Two swords I have at least had some practice with them recently at fighter practice. I do feel more comfortable fighting with two swords than I do with a sword and shield. I’d say it’s probably my second best style at this point in my journey.

Kickback Saturday

Saturday was a pretty chill day. I started out knowing I was not going to fight, I didn’t even bring my fighting shoes. My body was way to sore from fighter practice the day before. I did feel like I wanted to get out of the house and be social though.

It turned out it was a small numbers day, some of our most core weekly crew were unable to make it for various reasons, it happens. But it led to a nice relaxed atmosphere, at least for me. I managed to get 20 minutes of Louie and Critias battling it with foam short swords.

Then something surprising happened, at ditch formed, granted it was a 2 vs 2 battle, but they called it a ditch! I recorded it despite the small size. Eventually a new player showed up and joined, making it 5 for a few fights.

After the ditch was over and they were starting up a battle game, I headed home. I needed to prepare for the Baelnorn and Friends stream I was doing later that night.

I’m not going to go into the stream to much, it was subtitled We Three Kings because my guests and myself had each been a king of a different kingdom. I had a great time, we talked about a lot of good topics concerning holding office in Amtgard. You can watch it HERE if you like.

I will say that that stream has inspired me to write a script for a new video and has got me re-energized for future Baelnorn and Friends topic streams.

KLE Sunday

I managed to make it to Dragons Forge around 12:30. My goal for the day was to record the Weapon Master Tournament, surprise, I succeeded! But the real surprise was how much I enjoyed my time.

I did something I haven’t done for a tournament in a while. I used a Tripod. It’s probably what helped led to a more enjoyable event. Not to mention my brother was there and he ended up volunteering to keep an eye on the camera for a good part of the day.

This led me to being able to go around and do some visiting. Gustav was there and I got to say hello and even meet his dad for the first time, and pet Gustav’s dog Leia of course.

My time also lead to a good discussion with Farlanok about various Pro Wrestling ideas we could steal and do some fun shenanigans with at Amtgard. It was fun getting to workshop some ideas. Got to exercise a muscle I don’t often use these days.

I ended up leaving earlier than I might have if I didn’t have my brother with me. He didn’t say anything but I also didn’t want to stay so long he got seriously bored. We left as the first battle game of the day was taking place. It took me a good half an hour to say my good byes, but it was probably more like an hour.

I felt pretty good when I got home and I ended up editing the Critias vs Louie video that evening. By the end of the night I had plans to visit Iron Keep on July 6th. Oh, and I guess if you’ve read to the end of the blog then you now know where I’ll be visiting that weekend!

Final Thoughts

So, that was my weekend! It was pretty full and I really had a lot of fun streaming Saturday night. It’s rare, but I even had a bit of a streamer high after stream, it was fun!

I will continue to talk about my fighting journey over the summer, I don’t see that changing. The blogs will probably be much shorter than this one. I will of course make a point to let everyone know how the tournament goes.

Thank you for reading, your interest and support is very much appreciated.

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May 02 2024

Alert: Baelnorn Was On The Field

Table Of Contents
  1. The Foam Fighting Journey
  2. Discord Stuff

I did something this weekend I hadn’t done in over four years. I took the field in a ditch on a regular Amtgard practice. Not only that, I fought for at least 2 straight hours. This happened at Iron Keep 33 year anniversary event on Saturday.

This blog will lightly cover my day at Iron Keep but what I want to really do is to talk about my foam fighting journey this past month or so. I’ve also been fighting at Silvermoon’s fighter practice for the past six weeks and the Friday before the event was no different. Two days, and four hours of fighting, that’s a big thing for me and I felt inspired to blog about it.

The Foam Fighting Journey

Life has been better the last few months. I have stable housing for the first time in years and boy does that make a big difference to my psyche. Plus my health has been slowly improving. My depression and anxiety medication is in a reasonable place and I’ve been working on my diabetes. I started Ozempic and my blood sugars are dropping and so is my weight. I’ve lost 40 pounds in the last year. All of this has combined and set me up to get back into foam fighting.

It started when I went to a fighter practice at Silvermoon a few weeks before SKBC 2024. I went to record and but I ended up not recording and did a little fighting instead.

After that day I decided I would start live streaming fighter practice once a month and getting in a little fighting, for exercise reasons. That set the stage for this journey but it was little more than a precursor to the drive I have now. That story really starts at Sword Knight Boot Camp 2024.

SKBC 2024

I wrote an extensive blog about my experience at SKBC 2024 HERE, but as it is really the inspiration of my recent foam fighting journey it is where we need to start.

I went to SKBC to get content, but as some classes were not conducive to recording, I joined in on one, the single sword pod class.

It started by doing winners/losers, where you go around and spare other students. I only did it for about thirty minutes out of the ninety minute class and even then I took a few water breaks. I eventually stopped because my sword arm got tired and went noodily and I couldn’t control my swings to my satisfaction.

Still, I felt positive about the experience. I got some actionable advice on my fighting and I had a few things I could work on if I wanted. I was tentatively eager to start fighting again after that, but it was The Computer Computer class by Dalos that really got me motivated to foam fight again.

The last few times I had fought I did alright but I was fighting purely on muscle memory and instinct. Considering how well I was doing, I was kind of impressed with myself, but that didn’t make it feel engaging. It didn’t really make me feel like I wanted to seriously take up foam fighting again, outside of exercise. The class motivated me to think about how to fight again, which is what I find engaging in the fight.

Fighting Mindfully

It had been so long since I had engaged in the thought process of trying to understand foam fighting. There becomes a point after you get down the basics and you want to improve, you need to think more about theory; analyzing exactly how you do what you do. Doing that really can help improve your game, one expression of that is teaching. I like to call this state of thinkin being mindful about your fighting.

I take this philosophy from the idea of Mindful Therapy. The basic definition of that theory is this: “focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, especially as part of a therapeutic or meditative technique”. I’ve done a lot of this type of therapy and the parallels seem obvious to me.

When taking the Computer Computer course, it really gave me a direction on what to focus on and how to reengage the mindful fighting mindset. The class focused on creating a basic game plan when entering a fight. The idea was that the more you practice doing that, the more it becomes more natural and it becomes part of your fighting tool kit.

The class gave me a direction to how I could be mindful about my fighting again. I was mildly excited to see if I could take what I learned and have it carry me through trying to get back on the fighting field. It was then that I decided I was going to start going to fighter practice more than once a month if I could and do it more than just of exercise.

The Dodo Dojo

Even before I went to SKBC I decided to call the Friday night fighter streams the Dodo Dojo in honor of Critias (his heraldry is of a dodo bird). I already streamed three fighter practices. (You can see me fighting if you want! Stream 1, Stream 2, Stream 3.)

Each Friday after I got back I fought a little more. My arm strength was still terrible and I would go noodily pretty fast, but three weeks ago I bought some dumbbells. Since then I’ve been using them at home and it must have been working because this last Friday I spent nearly two hours foam fighting at The Dodo Dojo without any issue. Although I was sore at the end of the night.

Each practice I spent time trying to be mindful in my fighting, making a point to really watch those I was fighting, trying devise plans to take them out. It’s only been a few weeks but it has really got engaged in fighting. More engaged than I thought it would and I’ve seen positive results.

One example is last Friday. I was having some trouble fighting Torg when he was using his shield. I tried a few different things, but then I realized if I wanted to get my sword around his shield I needed to get in real close. So I figured I would step in to my left, block, step right and go up and around his shield, hitting his back.

I was able to execute this plan and it worked…sorta. I managed to get up close and went up and around his shield, but my angel of the sword wasn’t right and I ended up hitting the back of his arm. Still, I felt really good about what I managed to do.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that day set the stage for Saturday. It was my first time on the field of a regular Amtgard practice in over four years.

Iron Keep’s Anniversary Day

I had no idea when I work up Saturday that I was going to be fighting. In fact I assumed I wasn’t. I knew I was going to get some video, but I assumed I would just get that video, sit down and watch most of the day. I was wrong.

When I arrived there was a fairly large ditch going and I mean large, at least for a regular Saturday practice. Just to let you understand how big it was, we had nearly 80 people at this event. That’s the size of our monthly regional events.

I set up my chair and put down my stuff and I was greeted by Kormac, who had a gift for me. He bought me a cool pair of gnome socks! I heartily thanked him and I pulled out my gear and went to record the ditch.

I did so for nearly an hour before I got a little tired of holding my gimbal. It was at this point I decided I would stop recording and I would jump into the ditch and fight for a little bit before the tournament started.

The Ditch

I borrowed a sword from Kormac, as I only own one. I didn’t jump in thinking about doing anything other than just having a little fun. Previously during my foam fighting journey I decided I was going to focus on single sword, any other style was just for fun. The second sword was just to keep things a little more even in the ditch. It wasn’t an attempt at trying to improve my two sword game.

It wasn’t long till the tournament started and I assumed the ditch would die, but it didn’t. The ditch got a lot smaller, but it continued and so did I. Eventually the ditch got bigger again. Then the tournament ended and it got even larger. I just kept fighting. I ended up fighting for two hours.

It was only a month ago that I couldn’t fight for more than 30 minutes before I couldn’t fight any more. And here I was fighting for two hours a day for two days in a row. I hadn’t had that much fun at a Saturday practice in a long time.

I event started to get into the grove of two stick again, a style I spent a good amount of time using at one point in my foam fighting career. It’s probably my third favorite style. First being single sword and second being polearm.

I wasn’t the biggest threat on the field, but I was a threat. Despite thinking I wasn’t going to do any mindful fighting, I did start thinking about how I was fighting and trying to improve about halfway through. It wasn’t to the level I was doing during fighter practice, but it was enough to get back into the swing of two swords some.

Going Forward

So, where does this leave me? Was this weekend a fluke? I certainly hope not, but I don’t want to put to much pressure on me. I don’t want to make that a goal. That was the old me and would probably have led to me not meeting my own expectations and I’d get discouraged.

What I will do is remember I had fun and if I feel like fighting at a regular practice again I will. My previous stated goal of attending fighter practices will be my foam fighting focus. It’s only been a month, so I shouldn’t try to expand my goals yet and risk setting myself up for failure. I think it’s reasonable to work on one smaller goal over the next several months.

Still, this weekend really built up my confidence (and surprised more than a few people at seeing me fighting) that I can succeed on the goal I have set. We’ll see how often I can make practice, but I hope to go at least twice a month, more if I can manage it.

If you’d be interesting hearing more about my journey over the next few months, leave a comment. If there is interest I’ll try to keep everyone updated on my journey when there is something to blog about.

Discord Stuff

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I wanted to take a few moments to talk about the Baelnorn Community Discord. The relaunch has gone well! It’s been a few weeks and I’ve enjoyed chatting with all of you over the weekly discussions!

Additionally we had our first Community Discord Event, a watch party. We watched the 1981 classic Excalibur and it went really well! I plan on hosting a watch party at last once a month. We are talking about what movies we’d like to see in the future. Come and join the conversation!

I’ve also added an Event Forum Channel and added some Amtgard and Belegarth events happening in the Pacific Northwest this year. The forum is there for us to talk about those events and to share any events others might want to attend.

I’m really happy with how things have been so far and only image they will get even more fun with time! Can’t wait to see you there!

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