Aerial and life update

The strongest image I have of myself at the moment is a phoenix egg. I burnt down to ashes, and now I'm working on my rebirth. Eggs and hatchlings are extremely vulnerable, and I'm trying to protect myself to ensure my rebirth is successful and my next phoenix-stage thrives. I'm doing what I can, and the rest relies on external factors.

Hello, my name is Fern, and I'm surviving.

Life is hard for nearly everyone at the moment. If you're struggling, you're not alone. I see you. I care.

Aerial is one of the ways I'm looking after myself. I preferred hoop (lyra) when I started circus, but during lockdown, when I spent so much time playing in fabric because I was limited to what I had at home (I have borrowed a hoop, but its heavy and the toddler - who has recently informed me he wants to be known as Zigzag rather than Ziggy when I talk about him online - prefers the hammock), something in me clicked with the fabric, and now I love both equally. When things opened up more and I started teaching again, I'm not teaching far more silks than hoop, and I'm loving it.

Have some photos. Here is proof I have potential to be ok. 

 

Look after yourself. Look after your tribe. Be safe, keep going.

High Above the Crowds

When I started aerial circus four years ago, part of the reason I started was to overcome my fear of heights. (I mean, also to show off how bendy by nature I am, and because it sounded fun, but the acrophobia thing was a huge motivation too.)  

I'm just going to put this video here again, the first video of me on the hoop to remind you where I was after a few months:

Has aerial circus fixed my cure of heights? It's helped, for sure. I sometimes think I'm ok now, and then visit a castle and realise... not so much. But better than I was - as long as I have something to hold onto. 

I still have bad days. There's days when I climb the silks and look down and have to come down, no tricks. There's days when I can't climb the silks. But better than I was.

As this video shows. There is no way I could have done this - physically or emotionally - without aerial circus in my life.

This is part of a full routine, my second run of this section. It's exhausting with the first bit as well, and it is scary to practice, but I did it!

Circus Update

I haven't done a proper circus post since November 2015! How's crazy's that?

I still adore aerial. I still get stiff and sore when I miss sessions, which I now know to be a side effect of fibromyalgia. I'm on Instagram now, where I mostly share circus photos and videos, but if you're really missing my circus stuff, the best place to get a regular fix is my G+ Circus collection.

So, what have I been up to? Well, hopefully improving! I've learnt loads of new moves on both silks and hoop, and have been working to tidy my presentation and improve my musicality. Sometimes I do better than others, but I'm working on it.

I've started helping out as an assistant instructor with the beginners. I really enjoy this, and it's teaching me a lot about what I'm doing, too.

I've found especially on silks that I can pick things up much faster than the other students in the advanced class. I think this is because I've been going the longest, so I have better proprioception (one of my favourite words), and maybe a better feel for the mechanics of the moves. For instance, this was my first attempt at a move we're calling 'hokey cokey' (because you go in, out, in, out and shake it all about). It's a 'spaghetti move', that is, one where your arms and legs go in strange places and fly about like a jumble of spaghetti ;-D

We're also, as a school, starting to work with our weaker sides more. I've been unofficially doing this for longer, because my right side is dominant but my right shoulder is also the more prone to subluxation, which means certain moves don't feel safe on it so I learn those on my left anyway, and it injures more easily so I need to be able to do everything on my left so I don't miss as much if/when it does injure. This led to an amusing moment when we were doing a mini sequence on our weaker sides, I got down feeling like I'd nailed it, then one of the other students told me I'd done it on my stronger side - and it took watching back the video I'd taken to realise I had been correct. It's made me realise I'm stronger than I think. Also, when I tried the move in the video above on my weaker side, I discovered I actually find it easier that way, and it puts me in a better position to transition to 'ginger snap' after (unfortunately, I can't find a video of that move).

I learnt a pretty new drop. I spent ages watching everyone else do it, so was really excited to try. Haven't had a chance since, but want to try again with a bigger distance to fall:

On hoop, I can now do a barrel roll roughly a third of the times I try:

Vikki is the shortest person in the school and is technically too small for the hoops she instructs in (I think I'm slightly too big, as I sometimes struggle to tuck through), so she bought herself her own hoop. 

The hoops we normally use have a fixed point mounting and are attached to a strop via a pair of karabiners and a twist point, that means if we start spinning one way, we won't end up spinning the other way as the strop/rope tries to undo itself. Very useful, but it means we can't do much strop work because it's uncomfortable, the karabiners sometimes make it physically impossible, and there's always the risk (however remote) that the karabiners could come undone and the hoop tumble... Vikki's hoop doesn't have a mount: the strop is tied directly to it. So last night, we had fun playing with a few stroppy moves. 


My favourite was this spinny drop - definitely one for advanced students only, and requiring an unexpected level of flexibility to get into the start position. Really fun, but a little scary.

    
I was planning to share more photos, but for some reason blogger's playing up and not letting me add them.

What you don't see

Warning: talk of vomit and self-pity over pain and fatigue follows.

Here's what my weekend looked like:

Pretty exciting weekend away at a theme park, right? Lots of fun, lots of rides - even did the scare mazes, because I probably won't have a chance in the future (subspecies was great, the others ok).

When I set my out of office on Friday, I spotted that I had booked off Wednesday as well as Monday and Tuesday - a whole extra day off to write and have fun in! And you can see I had fun - check out the photos from last night!

Looks great, right?

What you don't see is that the only reason I was still walking by the end of the weekend was that one of my friends had disabled queuing and could queue jump 3 people with him. You don't see that I took loads of photos of The Smiler because I couldn't bear to queue for it, even though I really wanted to ride it, but sitting there waiting for the others had stiffened me so much I had to walk around. You don't see me nearly crying because the others aren't ready to go home but I've been wanting to leave for hours because I'm done. You don't see me waking up on Monday morning, falling out of bed and staggering to the kitchen to feed the cat, with a splitting headache that stayed until Wednesday evening. You don't see me crawling back to bed after feeding the cat, then crawling out again a few hours later to collapse at Husbit's feet, crying with the pain. He cooked me food and watched me pick at it, then went out to do the shopping and some other chores. You don't see me throwing up the food I managed to get down me, nor the dissolvable aspirin I drank after I finished puking the first time. This is something that happens to me when I either don't eat enough or otherwise exhaust myself. I threw up the aspirin so hard it was coming out of my nose.

You don't see me sleeping the rest of Monday.

You don't see me staggering around trying to prepare the flat for estate agent photos Tuesday morning, and making nice talk and helping move stuff around for the photos, while in so much pain I wanted to curl up and cry. You don't see me curling up and crying as soon as he left. You don't see me so fatigued I couldn't even watch TV.

You see me at circus. You don't see me seriously considering not going, but finally deciding I have to to keep the fibromyalgia pain away and hopefully reduce the headache (which you don't see still not responding to painkillers) - and also because I don't want to let anyone down. You don't see me failing at a basic move because I'm too fatigued to pull it off, and needing the trainee instructor to demonstrate it to the class. You don't see me collapse in the bath after, and struggle to get out.

You don't see the frustration when I woke this morning and the headache still pounded and I still couldn't move easily. You don't see me crouched in the kitchen trying to make food, grateful that the gabapentin and circus has kept the fibromyalgia pain at bay and trying to keep from crying with the headache and the exhaustion and the frustration that I'm not writing, like I want to be. You don't see me napping, and being woken from the nap by a noisy gardener so curling up to watch TV and crying at everything because I'm so damn tired, and then the gardener leaving and me trying to nap again, only to be woken again soon after by school kids running and screaming on my driveway. You don't see the internal battle that eventually sees me getting up and dressed and nearly crying again, when me opening the front door is all the catalyst it takes to get the gossiping parents to call their children to heel and go their separate ways.

You don't see the angry letters I'll never send to the school.

You don't see the affection the cat has given me all day. You don't see the relief that follows the kiss Husbit gives me when he gets home. You don't see the look on his face when he realises I'm still in pain.

You don't see the wonderful feeling that spreads as the headache finally lifts and I can write this.

You don't see the fear that friends and work colleagues will take what you do see to mean I'm fine.

#RPGaDAY2017: Day 27 - Essential Tools for Good Gaming

I love topics like this! It reminds me of Day 30 last year, which reminded me of Day 22 the year before, and my own post earlier that year about preparing the gaming space. This is different detail but the same theme, and turns out to be one I enjoy.

Essential tools for gaming: core rulebook for the game you're playing. Equipment as listed in rulebook (eg dice, cards). Character sheets. Comfy places to sit. People to play with.

(I know comfy places to sit don't sound like bare essentials, but anyone who's ever tried to sit for a couple of hours where it isn't comfy will understand, and having hips that like to sllide out at awkward times and fibromyalgia makes it absolutely essential for me).

For good gaming?

The core rulebook and any supplements being used should have a good reference format, making them easy to use quickly without interrupting game flow. Similarly, the character sheets should be clear to read (flashback to Day 26 in the first year).

Comfy places to sit: cushion piles to share with friends, big comfy sofas or armchairs, a snuggly corner. I'm not fussy. I need to fidget a lot.

People aren't really tools (not the ones essential to good gaming, anyway), but are worth mentioning, because for good gaming you want to be playing people on a similar wavelength to you - people you can communicate with well and who want similar things from the experience, or people you get on with well enough out of the game it doesn't matter so much.

Of my "essential" list, I've left dice to last, because dice are actual tools. They aren't essential to gaming, but most games make use of them, and I love dice.

I like to have multiple sets of dice. This makes Husbit laugh because in Deadlands I generally carefully seek out each of my d4-d12 sets at the start of each session - and then only use one of the sets all night!

Deadlands dice

Exalted dice

For Exalted, though, I do use my different colours. It started in Aberrant, where I liked to use red d10's for mega-attributes, purple for atttributes and blue for abilities (and orange for mischief). I've taken it a step further in Exalted: no mischief or mega-attributes, but the red get used for damage, white or pink for stunts and specialities, turquoise and green for equipment bonuses... It's unimportant, but I enjoy seeing where my successes occur: "Huh, no successes on my own, but with my suit's amplified sound system I managed to hear the whispering". 

Other tools? These days, I like a notebook to write up the game as we play. I knew people who could do that in the past and never understood how they managed to write all game without getting distracted from playing, but now I get it. I enjoy chronicling our games.

I've got a shiny dice tray and pretty dice bags and my folder for rolling on, but none of those are essential for good gaming.

I met Husbit on a coach on a trip up to Warhammer World. It was a coach so the seats weren't comfortable. None of my friends were on the trip: it was mostly the younger crowd from my local GW store, with me being dragged along to show off they had multiple girls, so I didn't really know any of the other people on the coach taking up people from my local and his, and while we had dice they were all d6's, and it was D&D he was running from a few seats behind me. With no rulebooks or character sheets.

The only things essential for good gaming are interested people and some imagination.

~~~

RPGaDAY was started by Dave Chapman and is currently curated by RPG Brigade. To join in yourself, follow the questions in the graphic and blog, vlog, tweet, or otherwise share your responses with the hashtag RPGaDAY2017.

#RPGaDAY2017: Day 6 - You can game every day for a week. Describe what you do.

As much as it'll shock some people who know me well, I wouldn't game every day.

Don't get me wrong, I adore roleplay, but it isn't my only beloved hobby and if I found I had a whole week to do stuff in, I'd spend some of roleplaying, sure, and playing whatever my friends wanted to run for me (so Deadlands, Exalted, Pathfinder, (old) World of Darkness, Numenera and homebrew stuff would likely get a look in). Then I might play some computer games (but probably not) and some BloodBowl and do some writing. And then I'd take myself off to as many circus sessions as my body would take.

Because if I just did roleplay I'd burn out and make myself ill. Joys of having two chronic fatigue, chronic pain conditions which both require management by exercise.

And the other thing I'd do would be finally prep that Buffy based game I want to run for some friends. I'm even more keen since finding a few of my aerialist buddies would like to play though I'll also invite a friend or two who've roleplayed often, to help guide them (as an aside, I was that player for a friend at uni, in my maths class. He wanted to run a game of Space Munchkin for a few of his flatmates and asked me to come along to show them the ropes. It was great fun - I played a catperson jedi creature and every time things slowed down I'd open a door or press a button. One of the other players got really into character and started pulling me around by my tail to try and protect the party from my curiosity!).

Aerial friends like this friend.

I've got a pretty good concept, set in a school building based on my memories of the upper school I went to. Obviously a school: it's Buffy! Though I don't intend the game to spill out of the school grounds, in the back of my mind I've a pertty good idea of the whole town, a cross between where I grew up, where I went to uni and where I live now.

I'll need to prep a load of archetype characters beforehand, as of my aerialist friends who've shown an interest, only one has played any game before (Werewolf, I think). Having pre-made character sheets means they can either grab some stats and play as is, personalise themselves, or have a frame to work from to create their own. I'd be looking at having them play pupils, but school staff would work to.

The idea is it's either after school during the week or it's a Saturday, and they're all in school for different reasons - I'll have a few to pick from, and they can come up with their own. There's a school play being rehearsed, something going on in the science labs (may have to talk to one of my aerialists on that one, as she's a science teacher so may have a good reason to be doing something science'y on a Saturday), some sports practices in the field (I'm more of a mathematician than an athlete, but I was a bit sad when I learnt my old school's playing fields had been squashed up to make room for new maths classrooms, even with the old ones being handed over to the drama department. It was a great green space. Also, I gather the art department weren't happy as it's completed blocked their light), maybe some arts/design tech students finishing some final project - and of course, those in detention.

And then things will start going a bit wibbly...

I will genuinely run this one day. I was thinking the August bank holiday, but that seems unlikely now. Once we've finally managed to move to a new house, though, I'll start prepping with more vigour.

~~~

RPGaDAY was started by Dave Chapman and is currently curated by RPG Brigade. To join in yourself, follow the questions in the graphic and blog, vlog, tweet, or otherwise share your responses with the hashtag RPGaDAY2017.

A Brief Note on Brexit

24th June 2016 was not a great day for me.

I don't feel that this is an appropriate place for me to rant about everything because the purpose of this, really, is to be cheerful and geeky and share love for my hobbbies. However, I am hurt by what's happened and the impact it's having and I want it recorded for whatever posterity a blog like this can achieve that not all Brits were happy with the result, that despite the media and politicians saying that Britain has clearly spoken, a lot of us don't agree with the outcome and I, at least, don't agree that you can call 51.9% "a clear, decisive majority".

I'm angry. I love free movement of people (so am pleased to hear we're likely to keep that, assuming we're not going to abandon the single market). I don't know much about economics, but I know we trade outside the EU but more favourably within: not because the EU prevents us trading outside, but because it provides favourable rates to its members. I know we have laws coming from the EU, but these are good things, like protecting equality for women and ensuring holiday time for workers and restricting the working week and (actually most importantly) protecting the environment. I don't believe that us leaving the EU is going to plunge us immediately into global war, but I do believe the EU is the reason there hasn't been war in Europe for decades.

(Which segues nicely into a Kipling line recalled to me as a result of the Chilcott enquiry: "If any question why we died,// Tell them, because our fathers lied.".)

It was also the day I got formally diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hypermobility type) and mild fibromyalgia (overlap with chronic fatigue syndrome). So all in all a very stressful, emotional day I'm still coming to terms with. 

Luck

A quick aside re bendiness: the physio wanted me to see a rheumatologist, which I'm very lucky work will pay for, but from a GP referral, not my physio. So I had to see my GP, who sent me for blood tests - I've ended up having three lots. She also put me on amitriptyline, which, now I've been off it for most of a week, I have to admit did reduce pain and improved how much I slept and took away my IBS but at too high a cost: I fet drugged and dopey all the time and couldn't think and had splitting headaches and nearly told my project manager to fuck off because I couldn't remember how to politely point out I was busy and now was not a good time for small talk. I also had really vivid dreams, which I'm never sure whether to put as positive or negative effect. Anyway, she let me come off after a fortnight so it's been out of my system nearly a week. I feel so much better and I am in a writing mood.

I want to talk about luck.

I trained as a maths teacher (although never went into teaching for a long list of reasons that protected me from the horrible realisation I wasn't emotionally strong enough to go into the profession I most admired), and remember being asked by one of the people training us if we believed in luck. I was the only one who said yes. Cue surprised looks, until I explained it depends how you define "luck": they were defining it in the superstitious sense, whilst I was using it as shorthand for startling coincidence or a statistically unlikely streak of events. 

It makes sense to me to use it this way: I know that you can roll a d20 three times in a row and get a 20 each time (and stick your crossbow bolt right through the big bad's head for an auto kill in the first round of combat - paragraph 8 of Absalom), or reach 40 on an exploding d6 (and find a replacement for that monofilament whip the bad guys took off you earlier). The laws of probability demonstrate that someone, somewhere in space and time is going to roll a balanced d6 and get a 6 every single time - hell, in an infinite universe, there'll be a planet somewhere whose laws of probability look very different to our own because the 6 will come up every time. 

I also know that, short of using weighted dice or learning to trick roll (which apparently isn't particularly great anyway), there's not really anything you can do to manipulate the chances of getting the result you want: lucky underwear might give you the confidence to approach that new friend, but it's not going magic the dice into doing what you want, so is manipulating luck the realm of superpowers?

It's certainly a very cool superpower, one I'd love. Control over chaos and entropy would be incredibly powerful and could stand in for most other powers - in fact, could be used to increase your chance of having any other power consistent with the rules of the universe you occupy. It's a power I'd be interested to explore in a supers game one day.

In fiction, I've only come across this idea a few times: the character Misadventure in City of Heroes (how I miss that game!) and Aornis Hades (spoilers in link), from Lost in a Good Book. Interesting that both are villains - maybe it's too much of a deux ex to give to the protagonist, but is interesting for them to overcome. Supporting this, the only times I can think of heroes having access to extreme luck is for short periods, such as the luck virus in Red Dwarf, or Felix Felicis in the Harry Potter series.

You can manipulate luck, and black cats and ladders have nothing to do with it. I'm thinking about Blood Bowl, where a good tactic is to force your opponent to rely on luck. You can buy rerolls and use up to one a turn to reroll a failed attempt (or if a ball is bouncing around and the wrong one of your players catches it, a successful attempt), and many skills you give players give them built in rerolls for certain types of skills, that can be use the same way. So when I take halflings to a tournament, I tend not to bother taking rerolls of my own (playing without rerolls takes practice but is worthwhile) and instead take an inducement called the halfling chef, who has the opportunity to remove up to 3 rerolls from your opponent and give up to 3 to you in each half (roll 3d6 during the first kick off of each half, and each 4+ is a reroll given to you and a reroll taken from them - it used to be a stolen reroll, so if you rolled 3 and they only had 2, you only got 2. I prefer the new way!) Immediately, you've manipulated things to fall in your favour, as the likelihood is your opponent is used to relying on those rerolls so their play style will be affected (one reason why learning to play without rerolls is so useful). You can also position your players to force your opponent to make the highest number of dice rolls you can - particularly if you can manipulate it so the types of rolls aren't favourable to them: halflings dodge everywhere on a 3 with a built-in reroll, so forcing them to dodge is less frightening for them than forcing them to block opponents, where their low strength means they'll probably be rolling two dice with the opponent choosing which outcome applies.

You can do it in roleplay games, too, playing to push odds in your favour. You might struggle to hurt a dragon, but creating a dragonbane net may at least snarl it up enough to make it easier not to die in the attempt. Lords of Gossamer and Shadow takes this further, removing the element of luck altogether and encouraging the players to find ways of bringing the odds into their favour.

In real life, we can't remove the element of chance so easily, but we can still stack the odds in our favour, or find the odds stacked towards us by chance. Research has shown that wealthy people are more likely to become more wealthy not because they are greater risk takers but because they have the money to take those risks. My intelligence, creativity and appearance are all quirks of genetics that have nonetheless given me benefits in life, along with being born into a loving, inquisitive family (although that may be tied to the afore mentioned genetic quirks). It spirals too: I got a job I love by the luck of intelligence and knowing the right person (my brother, in this case), but being in a job I love and am good at has helped me gain confidence in my abilities so that I am better able to take opportunities that arise: now I've found a path I'm happy on, I'm manipulating things to keep the luck that got me there flowing.

Optimism and pessimism also come into play. I'm generally considered an optimistic person: for instance, I feel very lucky to have a job with insurance that will cover the cost of me seeing a rheumatologist; I don't feel unlucky to have been born with a condition that requires the visit, or if I do, I do so by focusing on the parts of the condition that I like having - the suppleness, the youthful appearance, the high pain threshold - and still consider myself fortunate. My younger sister is a better example: some of her friends think she's very unlucky because bad things always happen to her but I think she's very lucky because sh's always fine. (She shared that opinion until the parachute accident: she accepts she's lucky to be alive, but the dislocated shoulder had long term repercussions on her career.) My anecdotal experience suggests being optimistic doesn't come from having good luck, but rather the perception of being lucky comes from being optimistic.

Luck is the way random chance falls. You can manipulate it, but never completely eliminate it. It affects you in ways beyond your control but the most important part of whether you are lucky or not is how you see the world.