So, I Died A Lot

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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