Coming to the end of the year, I thought I would have a look back on the year at some highlights. I will be having a look at these from a neutral perspective, examining things as they were. This means that I will be acknowledging the positives and the negatives to keep things even, but in the end, I think it will turn out to be... another year completed. (Be warned this is a little long.)
Book Published
Well 2019, you have been an interesting year to say the least. There have been some ups and some downs throughout you on a personal scale, and on a broader scale. Let's see if we can do this in relatively chronological order to examine things evenly, it will also see if I can actually remember everything that happened.I can now claim myself as an author as I have published my first book. I set up a publishing business, Sword and Book Enterprises, in late 2018 to achieve this, so the book was self-published. The book was officially published on 15 Marsh 2019, the book, Un-blogged: A Fencer's Ramblings, is available on-line from all sorts of places including Amazon and Book Depository. There are all sorts of people who helped me with this but, I cannot say "Thank you" enough to Jen Fraser, and my sister Julia Robertson, for their assistance.
On the same day as it was published I had a book launch at my place. I sent out a whole stack of invitations, via Facebook. Even had a Facebook Event set up for it. Of course, on that evening it decided to have torrential rain, so it was almost washed out. There was a small amount of people who were still able to attend and it was, a success pretty much. Hopefully, all things going according to plan, I hope to have two more books out in 2020.
Purple Challenge
Last year I was unable to participate completely in Relay for Life because my health was simply not up to it. I was very disappointed about this. So I decided that I would do something that I could do to raise funds for a good charity, hence My Purple Challenge was envisioned. The object of this was to raise funds and awareness for the Princess Alexandra Hospital Research Foundation, who does research into cancer and other areas.The Purple Challenge, which I have spoken about before was, for the entire month of May, I would bout people for $1 per bout. The restrictions were that they had to be from a recognised fencing group, and that I had to be at the practice where they would fence me, and there was time to have the bout. In the end, I raised $100 which was more than I expected, so I rated it as a success. I will hopefully be doing a repeat of this next year, with more advertising so I can get more people involved.
Elevation
I am a member of the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA). Which is a world-wide organisation that recreates the Medieval and Renaissance periods. The link, above, is to the Kingdom of Lochac which is Australia and New Zealand. I have been a member of this organisation since 1992. We recreate all the good bits of this period. There is an award structure which awards various endeavours which people participate in, and the structure has various levels. The highest being the Peerage.On 8 June I was elevated to the Order of the Laurel for fencing research and interpretation. I seem to have a pattern of having "big" moments in the SCA coinciding with wet weather, luckily on the day, the weather was "mostly" fine. The ceremony was held during a dry period of the weekend. This was recognition of about 2 decades worth of work. My prime area is Elizabethan fencing manuals, so Vincentio Saviolo (my favourite) and Giacomo di Grassi being the two prime Italianate manuals of the period. In some ways, I am still coming to terms with this recognition because this research is just "what I do".
Fencing Fest
Fencing Fest XVI was held in the beginning of August. It was, once again, a success. This is an SCA event held each year to get all of the historical fencers of the group together to share their knowledge and cross blades with one another. I started it because there was no dedicated event for this to happen. It has since been copied by various people and used to create other events.
I have been Steward (person in charge) of about a dozen Fencing Fests. They are relatively easy to run, especially when you have the right crew and support. My crew has always been amazing and very supportive. I have decided that this was my last one as Steward, as it is time for someone else to have a go and put their mark on the event. Time for me to move on to something different. Of course, I will always be around to give advice.
Swordplay 2019
I attended Swordplay for the Saturday and Sunday. I helped out a little with some stuff, but mostly spectated and caught up with friends that I do not get to see all that often. I would have been helping with safety except I was unable to. The Thursday before the event I had a liver biopsy, which meant that I was in no condition to be doing anything strenuous. I took it easy. This also meant that I missed several workshops that I wanted to attend, but the liver biopsy was substantially more important. Simply, it had to be done. It was the first time that I had attended a Swordplay with out an official role, an interesting experience.
Relay for Life
Relay for Life is rather special for me. My family has been touched by cancer more often than it probably should have. I have already mentioned that I missed out on participating in 2018. Luckily, I was able to fully participate in this year's event. Rather than walking around the track, as the other teams did, ours fenced for the time that was allocated. 17 hours of fencing, needless to say that we did not all do it at once, but had someone fencing all of the time.This was an interesting, emotional, and fulfilling experience. It rained, and was foggy, which means there was some serious cleaning of weapons and equipment required afterward, but that also meant it kept things mostly cool which was great for fencing. I wish that I could be in as reasonable condition all of the time. I managed my energy levels by choosing my bouts, a little selfish, but worked out I think. Of course, after the event my fibromyalgia made me pay for it afterward, but I still felt it was worth the experience.
Retirement
Not long after Relay for Life, in fact the day after, I retired as the Head of the School of Historical Defense Arts (SHDA). This is something which I have probably mentioned in a post somewhere in one of my blogs, not necessarily this one. I passed on this duty to one of my students, James Wran, who I believe will do an able job of this position. This was not an easy decision to make, but was one that I had to make for my own good.I have been Head of SHDA since the beginning some 6 years ago, and I felt it was time that someone else took over. I am not going to go into the specific reasons as it is not appropriate here. Needless to say, this is a decision that I made for my physical and mental health. The result of this has been that I am much more relaxed, and also much more focused. I am now teaching individual sessions rather than group ones, allowing better focus on the student. This is what I do better at anyway.
Letting go was a hard thing to do, but it was something that I needed to do. I still have some ties to the School as I still maintain my rank in terms of examination and obviously knowledge, and will always be around to advise should it be required. I may even be convinced to attend a class every now and then to see how things are going.
Health
Health-wise this year has been pretty good, osteoporosis has gone, the end of it much so. My respiratory specialist did not want to see me until next year, so a yearly visit. This means that my lungs are well on their way to clearing themselves up. Obviously my results from the breathing tests have been really good.The result of the aforementioned liver biopsy was that the liver was clear, so no sarcoidosis present in it, and the fat content that was present was non-reactive. This means that the liver has gone and cleared up completely. This makes me really happy, so my methotrexate was reduced to a maintenance dose. Hopefully there will be some good news sometime in the new year that it can be removed altogether, which would appeal to me.
On the other side of things, my fibromyalgia is being its usual unpredictable, annoying self. Only time I can predict that something is going to happen with it is when I do something strenuous, then I know I am going to pay for it. Other than that, it is the usual roulette wheel of random pain annoyance.
Just to go on top of this the greatest annoyance is my neck and my left arm. The neck is pushing on some nerves which is giving the expected pain, so sore and stiff neck. This is a problem which I have been doing some exercises for and should have taken to the physio by now, so partially my fault. The left arm was thought to be connected to the neck but the nerve is being pressed on the wrong side.
I am getting nerve pain down the left arm affecting some fingers as well, have been for an extended period of time. "It is not the neck because the nerve is pressing on the wrong side." or so I keep getting told. I think that the FM is playing silly buggers and messing up the signals, but what do I know. It is not mechanical as there is no blocking or pinching. This is a real mystery issue as the doctor has checked pretty much everything. So, looks like I am carrying this one into 2020, but all in all I am doing better than I have been.
Overall
I have not mentioned arguments. I have not mentioned fights with my wife. I have not mentioned a thousand and one annoyances, like the Australian Prime Minister being a complete d*ck, and taking the nation down paths which it should not go. These are things that I have either gotten past, forgotten about, or decided that they are issues which cannot be solved by me, at least alone. So they have not appeared in this summary of the year. I also did not mention my explorations into philosophy which have taken up quite a bit of my time and been very fulfilling. I wanted to keep things a little upbeat and focus on events, trying to end each part with a positive.Overall, even taking into account the little annoyances, and the bigger ones, 2019 has been a pretty good year. I have made some real achievements and been recognised for others which I have been making over an extended period of time. It has been a year of changes, where I have had to make the changes in my life, rather than letting things change them for me, this has been really fulfilling and empowering. I will hold on to this power and use it in the future.
Take things as they are, without interpretation and you will find that things are not as bad as you think they are. Make the changes yourself and you will find more power than you ever realised that you had.
