/ Dance

    As much as I'm all about the geeky things, I also love to dance.  We have a weekly night here that allows me to go out and dance with my friends to punk, metal, goth, industrial, ebm and all the other breeds of music which I love.  Due to the nature of the crew in this area it is often a night where us geeks/freaks/metal heads and punk rock kids all get together have fun, have good discussions (yes often about geeky things)  and dance.  It's a great time and I look forward to it every week!

   Today as I'm quite distracted from anything productive, work is dead and therefor somewhat boring (as you can tell by the MUCH earlier then usual post), the sun has been peeking at me and taunting me, through the windows here, to go out and play with my boff weapons or spend some time in the woods, and I've already written about three pages in my novel which has brought me to an impasse between my creative brain and my thinking brain today it seems.  I am to the point that I just can't sit still as I don't want to be here and I'm awaiting my night out!  As you can see I can't even concentrate on other things to talk about on here, so tonight and dancing it is!

    In people's lives there always is something that brings us a release from the stressful mundanity that we deal with.  Some people escape reality to do it, using video games, larping, reading, watching movies, things like that.  Some people use physical activities such as, dancing, exercising, running, working out a the gym, hiking, things like that.  Then there are some who take a little bit from column A a little bit from column 8 and mix it together to find some sort of peace and serenity.  In my life my biggest one is dancing.  It is the one thing that no matter what stress I've been dealing with, I shut off as much thinking as possible, listen to the music and just let myself go.  When I'm done it leaves me feeling sore, tired, overly warm and "glowing" ("girls don't sweat they glow").  It makes me feel at peace, having found my serenity and my place of happiness inside myself, releasing the things that have made me so upset, stressed out or just in a state that isn't a good one.

    I guess what I'm saying is that one of my hopes for everyone is that they can find that space, that thing that lets them relax, release and just move forward in their days, because I seriously believe that the world would probably be a better place if that were to happen.  It would leave us all finding a little piece of serenity in our fast paced, laced with stressful factors lives.  Because this world has too much stress and it's up to us to get ourselves through each piece of it.

Come to the LARP side...we have cookies!

    So a LONG LONG time ago in a fantasy world far away I was a young girl who was going to her first larp.  I remember walking onto the site and seeing all the people who were quite a bit older and had been doing it for a while and just couldn't stop thinking how amazing those folks were.  You know the people who were thirty something and had all the best armor, knew all the rules, had rules specifically grandfathered in for them and in reality helped out all of us young ones to get into the game and see it really was a fun time.  I remember having moments of, wow, I really hope I'm that cool when I get to their age.  I hope I can still have that much fun and help out the newcomers.  Here I am nearly eighteen years later and I am still larping.  

    Recently I've been helping to run one particular larp, am somewhat of the older crowd in a larp that I play in and have been casting at another larp and I have noticed.  I've truly become one of those people.  In the larp I help run, I have been one of the go to staffers for the players, most of which are 22 and younger, to ask questions, help them with character histories, give them ideas and teach them how the game works.  With the larp I play I have become the healer of the group as well as the one who welcomes the new kids in to show them the ropes of our particular group of oldbees.  

    Recently a few of my friends and I have discussed how it really  has been a change in the regime and we have seen on faces and heard them say how we are, or in my mind we are becoming those people to our younger compatriots in these arts. In some ways it makes me feel old but in others...it makes me actually proud in some ways that I have become a role model of sorts to these folks. I look at some of the people I have looked up to in some of my hobbies and I hope I can help some of these folks get to the point where they too become the role model for the next generation. 

    I'm not going to lie, in some ways it definitely weirds me out that I have become that person to those who are younger, because I never saw myself becoming that person. Getting such compliments for example my one of my friends received from a 20 year old, complimenting him on how fast of a runner he is. Or other such things like that. It has definitely been interesting having younger cast members and players informing me how cool it is that I know so much about it and that I've been doing it so long. I've never thought of larping as COOL necessarily but the sentiment is very appreciated. I just hope that I can help these kids to keep the magic alive and help to spread the enjoyment, fun times and really the love for each game as we move forward in all this. 

    Even though I have been backing off from some of these games, I used to be part of five or six of them and now I'm down to two and occasionally a third IF I have a free weekend.  But it is still nice to hear and see.  It really does make me smile and feel proud that I have turned into someone who people want to emulate  even if it is in something that is purely there for fun such as larping.  Makes a girl smile!

Attempting not to Wipe on Real Life Boss Fights

    I am often glad that I am a writer and enjoy video gaming, as it gives me the opportunity to kill things without being a violent person.  Which in real life, not so violent.  Sure I teach people to shoot bows and arrows, and I am creating a world which has an entire Rogue/Assassin's guild but I really wouldn't hurt someone unless it was in self defense or they were hurting someone else I was near, especially if that person was a friend.  But days like today, when I get so close to actual anger it makes me glad I have such outlets for this frustration.

    Ever have one of those boss fights in a game, whether it be a table top game, a video game or something entirely different that you just can't seem to win, no matter what you try or do?  That's how it feels with the owner of the company I work for.  He will daily yell at me and most of the time it's for things that someone else there did or things I wasn't in the office to be at fault for.  He will also try to imply that I am unintelligent or treat me like I'm twelve.  Luckily he hasn't come right out and said I'm an idiot, however the level of yelling and telling me I "have to be sharp as soon as you come in.  Have to keep on the ball and be smart."  doesn't instill much in me but frustration and annoyance.

    Today he called me to the office, and proceeded to yell at me to the point that the entire rest of the office heard it.  Now the way this compares to that unbeatable boss, I attempt to stand up for myself, or say my peace and he will make it worse.  He holds grudges, thinks he is above and better then everyone else there and refuses to let us fight for ourselves.  He will just yell louder until our rage bars are full or until we are running from his casting of fear on us.

    My only consolation is that after hearing him yelling, the rest of my co-workers did come, as you do in a party, and make sure that I was at "full health," and not emotionally distraught.  The way that he sounded they were worried he had actually fired me.  They spent the next twenty minutes attempting to calm me down and tell me how much he does that to them.  I'm apparently part of the "club" now.  Not a club I really want to belong to as the way he treats us all is wrong and unethical, but I don't have much more I can do about it.  As it is I'm already working on my novels and looking for new work.  So until I can find something else, I am there.

   Today was particularly awful, one of my biggest pet peeves is to have someone tell me I am unintelligent another is to tell me I'm completely wrong.  He not only yelled at me regarding an email which I had wanted to check with my direct supervisor to make sure I should send it to him first as otherwise I might have gotten yelled at for bugging him with it, and that took an hour and a half to get to but in turn decided to bring up the fact that I am human and therefor make mistakes.  He informed me that my mistakes had to stop or else, I passed my will save from the fear that he was casting.  Trying to inform him that I have been double checking every number that I pass to him and having EVERY person calling in spelling their name for me so I could have it correct for him.  Needless to say he yelled at me to get out and that it has to stop or else, yet again.

   So the best way that I can handle this boss fight is to prove him wrong at every turn.  Show him that I am better then what he thinks I am.  Give him no excuse to yell and get the frack out of there as soon as I can, I would love to leave him in the lurch for my position, but I refuse to do that to everyone else who works there as they're good people and don't deserve that.  Hurray for job hunting!  Stupid boss wipes...ah well at least I'm not wiping on trash pulls....just on the boss.

Aggro Management for Real Life Dating

     It's always a question of how to begin these things.  I supposed the best way to start is from the beginning.  Being one of those crazy gamer girls, I have always had options when it came to dating.  Now I'm not one of those, "Oh I just play video games, wear glasses and read SOMETIMES hehe" type girls.  I guess some would call me a hard core gamer girl, I play CCG's, video games, table top rpgs, I am a larper, I have been known to play some miniature games in my time as well, about the only thing I DON'T do is text based chat room gaming and MUD's.  I started gaming back when you HAD to know absolutely everything about all the games you played if you were a girl because it was a guys world.  Seeing from what I've been informed I've always been a relatively attractive lady, AND a gamer.  Needless to say, I have never been single for lack of someone wanting to date me.

     About eight months ago I made a decision to stay completely single for a while due to having gone from one relationship to the next for a few years now with no breaks and no healing in between.  I have always been overly caring and the first person to take care of my S/O's regardless of how much I should have been taking care of myself, they came first.  Just the way I work and am.  So lately I've been taking care of me, fixing myself and healing.  Much to the chagrin of a few, I like to call them vultures who were circling once I moved back home.  You know the type, the ones who just won't give up and accept that you're not looking for a relationship even when you say you don't want one.  There has been a couple which I have even had to threaten to walk away from friendships if they didn't back off recently, as they didn't understand the words which were coming out of my mouth.  

    Last night I was playing Guild Wars with a couple of my friends and all of a sudden we came across a Champion Undead guy (a Champion is essentially a world boss for those who don't play the game).  Now I play an Elementalist and we went to kick this guy in the head, we were doing pretty well until I noticed that no matter what sort of dodging I was doing he had decided that he wanted to hug me with death.  So I stopped any casting what-so-ever and started running around and away from him.  My three friends kept kicking him in the face trying to get him off of me, but it just wasn't working, so finally we all laid into him with MUCH DAMAGE and he died.  One of said friends, had to compare this to some of the guys who didn't get it previously without me kicking them in the head with "NO!!!"  The other two friends agreed.  

    Today while bored at work the same friend who compared these two things informed me I just needed my friends to go in and introduce themselves first, before I get too close and notice the cabbage smell.  An analogy which was regarding those folks who seem attractive at first and then you get to know them and they're not something attractive to you AT ALL, and therefor, "That vegetable is so cute let me go closer, Oh!  What is that smell!"  Therefor saving me from having to "burn them with my fire spells" i.e. tell them off for coming on too strong.  It may be a good plan I'm thinking.  Because really I'm not one of those people who LIKES hurting people, though I will burn undead any time I can.