I don't have any recent pictures so none are being posted this time.
I'm going to cover a couple thing in this post since I haven't posted in a while. real life issues have kept me away from the SCA for a little over a month. but I find myself asking many questions along my journey.... Why am I here? Who am I???? What do I want to accomplish???? The questions are simple. The answers are becoming increasingly difficult to find. Sure at first it's easy "I'm here to fight and to show everyone I am awesome! forget about fun! I want to win it all!! I want to be a bronze ring and a knight and laurel etc etc etc" I have had an eye opener this year and it has caused me to look back on several things I have done in the SCA.
Why am I here? Well at first the answer was my parents dragged me into this lame thing where I can't do anything and it's incredibly boring and I hate it. That's when I was much much younger. As i got older I noticed these groups that had shiny swords or big thumping sticks and I grew increasingly interested until I said I wanted to learn this stuff. I watched the heavy fighters smack each other and clash together and thought that was a group I wanted to stay away from. I didn't associate with them and barely even acknowledged them. sure you can hear the crashes and the yells from the rapier field but in my opinion they were just a bunch of thugs. Then there were the rapier fighters. still aggressive but not to the point they were throwing people around. they had a certain refinement about them and seemed much more welcoming and a lot less scary (you have to remember I was 13 to 14 yrs old) so I thought " I definitely want to be one of these guys" and a few days after the event started working on that. Then you had the pointy crowns.... barons baronesses, kings and queens, princes and princesses etc. I thought they were a bunch of stuck up snobs not worthy of my attention. Some were and others weren't. At the time (again I was young and didn't realize the way things worked) I thought children of royalty took over for their parents when they were older. so again.... I wanted nothing to do whatsoever with royalty. sure i bowed to them whenever they passed but for the most part they were ignored. later on someone suggested retaining which i did a few times and it was boring. As I got more into the SCA I started water bearing when I wasn't fighting (which was very very often as there was practically no one i could fight as a youth). Finally I turned 16 (before the rule about 16 yr old fighting with adults) and I said screw it and left the SCA for a year. I completely dropped off of radar. I attended 1 event so my auth didnt expire but that was pretty much it. To me there was no point in continuing to go to events if there was nothing I could do. I wasnt into any a&S type stuff then either. then when I turned 18 I started my come back. I wanted to win in rapier and prove to them I was back. That failed quite horribly. I am still working on getting past the going out just to win issue I am stuck on. Fast forward another year. many trials, lessons blood sweat and tears and i am getting better on the rapier side. At this point I had grown interested in Heavy fighting and that interest grew and grew. Then I caught wind my 2 sisters were playing heavy and authorizing soon. I surely did not want to seem weak compared to my sisters! So I got in armor for the first time last year at one of the ,then princes', practice (GASP I'm hanging out with royalty.... and this royalty forever changed my outlook on royalty). After that practice I wanted more. the second was not as fun but with lots of help I have gotten better. I authorized heavy so i could fight my sister and am finding myself with the same issue as on the rapier field..... I want to win!
Now don't get me wrong... winning is fun and all but after several conversations with rapier fighters they all agree.... You are not always at your best when you are out there to win. Once you get this winning out of your head and you say screw it and just go out to have fun... you will do much better. On a good day when i am in a fair mood I say screw it, go out, have fun and actually end up killing people. only when I am focused on winning does my game truly suffer.
So Why am I here??? Why are you here???? The answer is for YOU yourself to decide. It may not be the same every time you go back to this question. We all have different goals and as we grow in the society the answer changes.
What do I want to accomplish? Again it all depends on your interests and what stage in the society you are at. I just wanted to be a fencer when I started out. Now I am a fencer and a heavy fighter and I am looking into A&S stuff. On the rapier side I want to become a bronze ring. On the heavy side I want to become a knight and eventually Queen by Right Of Arms. Both of these goals are going to take a lot of work and I know that to become a knight a knight has to notice something in you and ask you to become a squire (at least this is my understanding) I am very much up to the challenge and look forward to learning all that I can to obtain these goals.
If you start out with small goals you are sure to achieve them one way or another. The road may be long and hard but it will be very rewarding in the end.
