Cons (no pros)

Ways in which Birka (this past weekend) is unlike Arisia (the previous weekend):

• Birka had an SCA court


• Arisia had a dayboard/consuite

Er, that's pretty much it. They were both largely social mingling occasions featuring live combat, costumes both elegant and painful, an abundance of merchants, an art show (or A&S display), classes or panels, late-night room parties, and a generally overwhelmed hotel. I don't think Birka had a fashion show this year, and it's never been as emphasized as Arisia's masquerade, but it has been there in the past.

For me, they were reasonably different, though. Arisia time was divided between working security (which requires walking around and talking to people, which I'm going to do anyway...) and partying, with a healthy (and pleasantly chaotic) dose of hanging out with marrus tossed in. I ran the Intercon party again Friday night; being up on the 8th floor we were a little more out of the way than last year, but attendance was still reasonably high. I again did not go to any panels, and few planned events. I checked out some of our audio theatre 'competition' doing their live-at-the-mics performance, and a couple of the actors were pretty good (CvJ in particular got the feel of the piece I saw very well), but the work as a whole I found underwhelming. Admittedly, playing an audio-only piece with a watching audience can be tricky, but I really think it was the written material that was the problem, too caught up in meta-self-analysis, too chatty, and with nothing to really engage me as a listener or viewer. Anyway, dancing the night away and schmoozing the day away is still a winning combination.

Birka, on the other hand, was the first time I'd fought since fall Crown, and in light of that and various bits of equipment failure, I didn't do altogether badly, but I am still way out of practice. After that I did a tiny amount of shopping, which I never really enjoy, a large amount of spending time with friends (and cat9, of course), and a thorough quantity of avoiding royal court. We had an early dinner having not really eaten all day, so we missed the en masse escape-the-hotel-in-search-of-food quest, but it's probably just as well since as with Arisia at the end of the day we needed to drive home again, and I suspect the dinner mob got back quite late. And this way we got to spend time with the lovely dreda and rising_moon.

I do feel like I should go to some kind of SCA event again at some point, though...

New year's introspection, belated

Having been completely out of touch with LJ for a while, I never got around to my annual review of the previous year's objectives. So, a month late, here's a look back at last year's list.

1. Go to the gym
   Some gaps, but I did not too badly.


2. Compose a piece of music
   Not at all. Maybe this year.


3. Learn a new language
   I learned a basic amount of sign, although I'm nowhere near fluent. I may continue to pursue it. I had reasons to resurrect my knowledge of Spanish, and occasionally Russian, but I'm looking at Italian as more likely...


4. Win a tournament
   Nope. Entered a couple, did better than I've done in the past, but no victory yet.


5. Go on an exciting trip
   The trip to Playa del Carmen was pretty exciting, complete with muy authentico experiences navigating a foreign culture, and hiking through rainy jungles to climb mighty Mayan temples.


6. Invent a game
   I had a sort of vague general idea, and never really developed it.


7. Save the world, a little
   I did nothing really significant here. Why does saving the world seem to take effort?


8. Make someone speechless with kindness
   I think I actually did that once or twice, and even if they weren't literally speechless I fulfilled the spirit of the goal.


9. Don't make anyone cry
   For the bulk of the year, did fine (as far as I know). Failed dramatically at the end. In slight mitigation, this was a goal several people pointed out as potentially the wrong emphasis. Things happen, and people cry, but it's not always a personal failure that you took the action that caused it. Still, some unfortunate learning experiences were involved.


10. Teach something
    I taught a class at Pennsic. It's a start, but I should do more.

5/10. Significantly the worst performance so far, possibly because I set concrete goals instead of vague generalities, so it's more clear when I didn't really follow them. Having it be a checklist rather than a set of guiding ideas is somewhat less satisfying, though. I will probably carry some of these over as things to do in the future, but they're not going on this year's list. In fact I don't like to carry goals over in these lists because it would tend to bind me too much to the past.

So, this year's goals. Hmm. I have a loose ToDo list elsewhere, but nothing in mind that really meets my desire for non-checklist items. I suppose, looking back, item #1 could be "Finish what you start", which is a tough goal in and of itself.

While I continue to ruminate, any ideas from the y'all on what I should do this year? It's kind of like that game everyone else played a month ago, but with an added tinge of self-improvement (unless you just want to tell me something interesting to do in the next 12 11 months. I'm interested in that as well). I auto-screen anonymous comments, but I don't log the IPs, so if there's something you'd rather say with anonymity, go ahead...