2017 is Gone, 2018 is Here

Greetings,

I don't usually do this, but I figured that I might anyway. This will be a kind of "year in review" but with a bit of a difference. While we need to look at things that have happened, it is also important to look forward to things that are coming, both to prepare for them and to hope for them. One thing that I will say, just sitting here, except for a couple of highlights, here and there 2017 is a bit of a blur now.

Well, 2017 had its upside and sure had its downside. The result being that it turned into a bit of a year with memories which I will keep and some things which I could get rid of, or reverse.

January started as it always does, hot. It also had all of the first month of the year poking and prodding by specialists, just to make sure that everything was going according to plan. There were also a couple of small swordplay things in there as well, just to cap the month off.

February was pretty dull, somewhere either in January or February my neck issue had also risen its ugly head, again. CT done to see if anything could be done, physiotherapy chosen instead. C5 - C7 is a mess and presses on the nerve giving me headaches and pain, real lots of fun when combined with the fibromyalgia (FM), but this is a recurring problem not something I can blame 2017 for.

Good things that happened over the early months, diagnosis of Central Sleep Apnoea (CSA) and a new machine meaning I am now getting real quality sleep, a real bonus. I can tell the difference without it, like a lot. Of course I had to pay for the mask myself which took a couple of months and a couple of hundred dollars.

Oh, yeah forgot, during the storms earlier in the year we got storm damage. It then has took about eight months to get the roof repaired, and the actual damaged part of the front of the house still has not been repaired yet as I am waiting to hear from the builder. Overall, thank goodness for insurance on the house.

The year wore on and I was given a diagnosis of plantar fasciitis, which explained the reason why my feet were getting so sore when I was standing on them for any length of time. Just another one to add to my list.

Went to Great Northern War (national SCA event), which was wet, very much so. Still had quite a bit of fun teaching fencing and also fencing. Won the Powerful Owl Rapier Tournament, which I was quite happy with considering the weather was doing my joints no favours whatsoever. It was also nice to see others fencing so well.

The calendar seems to be dotted with appointments during the colder months which I was not able to make, which was unfortunate, but this is kind of expected. There are also quite a few more doctor's appointments scheduled during this period as well.

Went to Fencing Fest as a paying customer for the first time, which was nice. Still did a class on cutting with milk bottles filled with water which was quite popular again. I will be running the event again next year. In August I also managed to get to fence a friend who I have been waiting to fence for 21 years, Nic Harrison, and it was everything that I had been waiting for.

September was its usual busy self. St Florian Baronial (local SCA tournament) and Swordplay 2017 (national HEMA event) resulted in me being in a wheelchair for the last day of Swordplay having pretty much run myself into the ground, this is called causing a fibro-flare because you worked it too hard. This resulted in me being off my feet for about a week. Due to a repetitive theme of this "week's recovery" every year, I have relinquished my role as Chief Safety Marshal for 2018.

In early October I was invited to join the Order of Defence (the highest level in the SCA possible for fencing), which I accepted. The elevation took place at the Burnfield 15th Birthday Bash, and the event contains memories which I will hold dear. This was a big thing for me. Also this year I sent of the manuscript of my first book to the publisher to be published, so hopefully that will be out this year.

Just when everything looked like it was going rather well, my cousin passed away on 17th December, she died saving her nephews, which is something which I will take with me, always a hero. Just to make it a real kick in the teeth it was the 10th anniversary of my mothers death on the 16th December, so the end of December looked pretty bleak for me and I found it quite hard to get into the whole "Christmas spirit". Casey and I did the easy thing and stayed home and let people visit us.

New Year's Eve was spent playing board games and card games with a few friends. The new year was rung in with relative quiet celebration.

The most important thing to remember is that 2017 is gone, 2018 is here and it is this year that you have to deal with. Yes, there is some fall-out which will brush over from one to the next, but you must move on and move on with a positive spirit. I have heard too many people say "Well, it can't be any worse than last year." Well, actually it can. You should do your damned hardest to make sure it isn't. You have to do your bit too.

Cheers,

Henry.

Pain to Power

Greetings,

I know it has been quite a while since I have put anything on this blog, I have been having a lack of inspiration for anything of relevance to write. My fencing blog (afencersramblings.blogspot.com.au) seems to be so much easier to write for some reason. I am guessing that this one is personal and I do not know exactly how much of my personal stuff people want to hear about. I am really not the sort of person who likes to sit around complaining about stuff. I write here to inform and to give others ideas about how to deal with things in their own lives. So on to the subject of the current post before I get too side-tracked...

The purpose of this post is to look at how we can turn our pain into power. No, I am not talking about working a generator, I am talking about using it to motivate and to make us do more rather than withdraw into our shells as we often want to. This may seem very strange to some, as soon as the pain starts they stop because it hurts and therefore the concept that the pain can make them powerful is going to be rather alien to them. Obviously for me, not so much.

"Work through the pain." How many times have you heard this statement? It is often proposed by gym-junkies and the like when they are exercising. They are talking about pain which is developed by fatigue or a "stitch". This is not the sort of pain that people with fibromyalgia (FM) and similar conditions are familiar with. For them it is nerve pain, much more painful, and often longer lasting.

Step 1: Choosing

The first part of turning your pain into power is that when the pain strikes you have two choices. No, actually you really do. You can stop what you are doing, or you can continue. If what you are doing is not particularly pleasurable or you are not particularly motivated to doing it then stopping and saving your energy is probably the best option. Save your energy for battles you want to pick. If you are doing something that you want to be doing or is pleasurable to you and you are motivated to do, then not stopping is probably an option. You have to choose not to stop.

Step 2: Energy

The next bit is having a look how much energy resisting is going to take and how much you have in reserve. Time to "count the spoons" as some would put it. Resisting the pain and continuing is going to take energy, and in some instances it is going to take quite a bit of it. The questions you have to ask yourself are: Do you have this energy? Are you willing to spend it? Are you willing to put up with the consequences of spending it? Is the outcome going to be worth it? The last question is actually the most important as far as I am concerned, the rest are not so important, but that is me.

Step 3: Spending the Energy

Out of all of the steps this is the hard bit and takes the real determination. This is the bit where most people will feel that they have failed, or will quit trying and so forth. This is the bit where you stare the pain down and tell it who's boss. This is the bit where you look it in the eye and tell it that you are going to continue what you are doing until you want to stop, not until it wants to stop you. This is going to take determination and energy to keep going. Most importantly believe that you can do it and do it.

Step 4: Downtime

After any energy expenditure you need some downtime. This will allow you to recharge the batteries a little. At this point in time you should not be thinking about how you went, only about resting and recharging. To tell you the truth, this is the bit that I have the hardest time with, I always feel that I should be doing something. Most of the time for me it is "crash"-time rather than downtime, and I do not recommend it. Take time to rest instead.

Step 5: Evaluation and Preparation

After you have had some time to recharge your batteries you need to have a look at how you did. A responsible person always evaluates what they have done and learns from it. Most importantly, this is personal evaluation. You do not need to, nor should you, compare your successes with anyone else. Please notice that I have not mentioned the word "failure". If you did a little bit more than you would have done because you chose to. You have a success. The successes do not have to be big, the just have to be present. Find out what you can do differently next time to improve your situation so that you can do better. The next part is preparation and preparing to make the same choice again, because it will come around again, and you have to be willing to make the same choice again. The more you do it, the more motivated you will become and the more powerful you will become. Hence pain to power.

If you are reading this and think that this is an easy sort of thing to do, you are kidding yourself. It is even more difficult if you are not prone to resisting the pain and letting it have its way. The method I am proposing here is hard, and it takes time, but it is about standing up and taking power over the pain rather than letting it have all the power. No, I am not saying that you should ditch all your medications, that's crazy, but the power of your own motivation can help a hell of a lot.

I am proposing a method that works for me. Now be warned I am a stubborn sod, any one of my two siblings will tell you this, as will many of my friends. I hate being confined by things. Most of all I hate being confined by my conditions, thus I fight against them. Now a lot of the time this can land me in some hot water, you will not posts about me talking about "crashes". This is because I push the method that I am proposing to the extreme and then suffer the consequences. What I am proposing for you is to use it in a much more measured fashion. Have a go, what's the damage it can do to try?

Cheers,

Henry.

Some Dreams Do Come True, But...

Greetings,

There are things that we all want out of life. There are things that we dream about and wish that we could have. There are some things which we cannot have and there are some which we can have. The question with regard to all of them is what are you willing to pay to get there? This entry describes something which has happened recently, which I will get to, and I will tell how I got there. However, it also will be used to see what you can do with some effort.

For many years, ever since I managed to get some experience and some students of my own, I have dreamed about running my own fencing school. This is a dream which I knew was one which was always on the outer limits of what would be possible due to many different factors. But it is one which I have thought about and talked about much. Indeed my immediate family has heard me talk about this dream a lot, and so have some of my students. I knew that this was on the outer limits due to many different factors and this is one of the reasons why it took me so long to do anything real about it.

Sure I had plans for schools many years ago, much of the documentation has been rolled into other endeavours of a similar nature, but much less long-lasting. The reason for this is because these smaller endeavours were easy and never really required much more of me than what I was doing already. So within the SCA, I have had some schools which have grown and developed. Some of these collapsed because they were too big to survive as they were, but achieved their goals. Some collapsed due to internal frictions and misunderstandings of what was required. However, as I have said these were small projects in essence. They did, however lay the foundations for what would happen later on.

If you have a dream that you want to come true, regardless of what it is, you need to put some effort into it in one way or another. Even the dream of winning millions the lotto requires you to buy at least one ticket to be in the draw. You have to be in it to win it, as has been said many times. Of course it also means that there is the chance that it will not work out, so there is the chance of failure. It is this which keeps many away, and I think what prevented me from going outside and doing what the school needed to be "real". Treat your failures as learning experiences and you will find that you can continue. This is what the failure of previous schools has taught me, and it is information that I will use.

Effort on its own will get you places, but it may not be where you want to go. You need a goal, a direction, and a plan. The goal is the end-point, the direction gives focus to your effort, and your plan guides this direction, each one is important. For some, they need to put these down on paper, for others they only need them in their heads. What I can tell you is that while the essential goal will remain the same plans will change. Plans usually change on the information given by failures or intelligences to lead you away from failures.

In my case the goal was the school, which I had for ages. The direction, well I had some to choose from, and the plan, well that was rather flexible due to the options available. In my case, what I needed was a couple of like-minded friends to really get the ball rolling and push me along a bit. They both know who they are, and they have my greatest thanks.

The school was designed to explore elements of western martial arts which were not available to practice under the current regime of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA). Now, some explanation. I will remain a member of the SCA as I have friends in that organisation and I still have things to give the organisation, however this school allows me to practice other things and investigate more. Also there are some out there who like the idea of some of the practices within the SCA, specifically the Guild of Defence, who are not interested in adopting personas or putting on period attire. Thus this is for them also as some of the structure and many of the teaching practices are the same as the Guild. This is the goal, in essence.

The direction was chosen much for me due to very external factors, primarily finances. The school will at least start as a non-profit organisation due to the current financial climate and available financial resources, however should the situation present itself, the school can and will move to a business platform, but this is for the future. So direction in this part was chosen, it was for similar reasons that the plan was modified.

The result, well let me just say that I have the final planning elements and collection of students and moneys to be made, but my dream has come true. Due to the approval given for insurance through the Australasian Living History Federation, I will be running my own school for western martial arts. So I can honestly say, that dreams do come true. Where I go from here, well it is one of those things that only the future can tell.

Cheers,

Henry.  

Eclipsed?

Greetings,

The question of goals and successes I have spoken on previously. This more article more points at perceptions of success and how we see them, but also how others see them. This article is pointed at those of us who feel that we have been eclipsed in some way be it in social circles, work or other fields of endeavour.

Have you ever felt eclipsed, like someone was out there taking what should be your glory? Have you ever felt like you have been pushed back into the shadows because someone else is more important than you? Have you felt like that you are not the major person with regard to a topic, and that everyone else's achievements are bigger and more important? Everyone has, you are not alone. This can happen in work, in our private lives, in our work and even in our relationships. It is what you do about it which is important.

First, you need to look at the situation with a critical eye, especially toward yourself. If you can not look at yourself honestly then this process will fail. You need to look at yourself and your achievements honestly. You also need to look at the reason for your achievements and efforts as well as this is also important.

So someone is put ahead of you. Is there a reason for this? Have you put in the same level of effort as the person concerned? If not then this is the first place you should look. Have you really put your heart into what you are doing or are you just doing this because it is expected? This is a question we must look at carefully the expectations other people build must not be more important than our own. Your own goals will always have more strength than the expectations of others, and you will always put more effort into your own goals over other's goals which have been set for you.

Sometimes it feels that we have no choice in what we are doing. The truth is that there is always choice but we just might not like the choices which have been presented to us. This can be especially so with regard to work. If your work is not fulfilling, my suggestion is to find fulfillment in something more social or recreational.  There is always somewhere we can find lasting fulfillment, it is simply a matter of finding it.

When you do something you have chosen to do for yourself, not something which has been thrust upon you or expected of you, you will gain more satisfaction in its completion. In many situations this is the only thing that you will get from your efforts as personal goals are just that, personal. The important thing here is that it is your own goal, your own struggle, your own achievement, nothing for anyone to say anything about. Where there are other participants things can become more complicated.

We always compare ourselves against others, either consciously or unconsciously, and regardless we always want to be equal or better than others. This becomes more the case where a particular achievement requires the participation of others. These others can be hurdles to what we want, or they can be seen as fellow participants and a challenge to overcome. Learn what you can from other participants, it can only improve what you are doing in some way.

Most important for ourselves. We need to find things to do that we enjoy, regardless of the other's thoughts. These things need to be constructive rather than destructive in their nature. We need to find things that we want to do and not because someone else said we should or are required to do. We need to find things which we are good at or are willing to put in the work to become good at. We need to find things which we can actually do, there is no point in finding things where the goals are unreachable, thus setting ourselves up for failure. In this we need to be realistic. We need to find things which we want to do, there is no need to fill other's expectations, unless we want to, it is your life live it the way you think best. Most important and above all things...

BE YOURSELF.

Cheers,

Henry.

The Inevitable Crash

Greetings,

Well, I have been cruising now for a couple of weeks doing stuff at home and with regard to several projects. This is not to mention my usual training sessions that I am involved in. All in all I have made some progress over the past couple of weeks, but I know what is coming around the corner... the crash.

The crash for me is usually the result of pushing myself a little hard for a single burst or over a period of time. For the most part in this instance it is the second one. This one has been building up for some time and I have been putting off the rest-breaks I should really have been having. What does this mean? This means I am going to pay for it in the not too distant future. It will probably result in some severe down-time for a couple of days while I recuperate.

At the moment I am putting this one off until after Easter. I have an examination to test in Renaissance fencing to do down near Gosford. My accommodation has been paid as has my flight down so all I have to do is hold this off until I get back and it will all be good. Of course this is going to have to result in some "artificial buoyancy" for the period, mainly consisting of more sugar and caffeine in my system while I am up and the possible increase of some pain medications overnight. Why would I do this to myself you would ask?

Because the effort is worth it. I would rather have some big high points in my life and have to put up with the lows that accompany it than just coast where it is comfortable. This is my nature I am stubborn and I refuse to let my condition determine what I will do in the future. I want to be able to do stuff now, and have the chance to do it again later. If this means that I have to pay for it... so be it. As far as I am concerned hitting the heights is most definitely worth the lows that accompany it.

Cheers,

Henry.