storytimewithjoe | A new SCA direction (Reply)

After receiving what was mostly really good advice from people, I have decided to pick myself up by the bootstraps and take myself in a new SCA direction. In so many ways, the most obvious and best answer seems to be the most elusive – putting effort into things that I *want* to do, rather than on the things that I think *need* to be done, even if I don’t really enjoy doing them.

So simple, so obvious, and yet such a foreign concept to my brain. Too long, I have said, “Yes” out of a feeling of guilt. (You can take the altar boy out of the Catholic Church…) Nobody to blame but myself on this one, really.

The truth is, I have been feeling burned out. This malaise has hit so many of my friends lately, mainly I believe as a result of the climate that has hit Caid over the past few years (although I am delighted to report that recent events have turned that whole thing around wonderfully). For me, it hasn’t been the climate so much, but just an unexplainable feeling of… I dunno… being lost and without purpose. While I may not always enjoy every job that I do, I DO enjoy feeling needed. It is comforting.

Over the course of the next year or so, here are some of the things I’d like to do…

- Hand over the last of the offices that I hold. I have shed most of them already. I will soon end my 3 or 4-year stint of hosting Kingdom Scriptorium. As for KMoAS, I have one more year until I can receive the ottoman to go with my retired officer rocker so that I can sit comfortably on the Retired Officer Porch and wag my cane at the young whipper-snappers.

- Work on smaller, more concentrated projects that I really enjoy doing.

- Think about the next pentathlon. The last one inspired me so much, I think I’d actually like to enter again. Hmmmm…

- Get crackin’ on embroidery. I am JONESIN’ big time to start on my Opus Anglicanum project. The start has been delayed for ages because of time and materials (quite literally). I have the design all planned out (usually a HUGE problem for me), and now I want to just get goin’ on it. Hopefully, this weekend!

- The Italian Renn. Themed event. As much as I really do not enjoy autocratting, the only way to make this vision come into being will be to make it happen. I think I’ll start out small, hoping that it might catch on and over the years grow into something larger. We’ll see how that works. Ah, but just thinking about it – the food, the songs, the dances, the décor, and of course bocce… it simply must happen.

- Classes. When it comes down to it, I enjoy teaching. I need to figure out what I would LIKE to teach.

I’ll probably still hang out in the kitchens quite a bit. Heck, I enjoy them much more than I enjoy sitting through court anyway. I may have to work on a cool themed feast sometime in a year or so.

Time to reinvent!