Stepping Up

            An interesting reoccurring occurrence in my life is that, while I very strongly dislike being in a position of leadership, I frequently seem to find myself filling a leadership role. Be it for work or play, it seems like I always end up as one of the people making the decisions – a very unfortunate job for a chronic fence-sitter.

            My most recent of such experiences took place over this weekend, but to understand just how often this has happened, we really need to go back quite a ways. I don’t know precisely when it started, but the first I can think of chronologically was in my highschool choir. In grade 9, there was a decent sized selection of male singers, but most of them were in their last year – including the one that informally led them simply by being such a strong singer. The following year, there were only 4 males in the 30-or-so person choir, and I happened to be the one who stepped into the empty leadership role – though I was thankfully replaced for part of the year when teachers were invited to join. However, the mantle fell back to me the next year, and eventually led to me being in the smaller jazz choir and even performing one song where I was the only person on the melody and everyone else was basically a back-up-singer.

            Also in my highschool years, I joined Amtgard, a Live Action Roleplaying Game. Three months in, I ran in the election for the role of the records-keeper and treasurer because at the time the records weren’t being kept up to date, and I held that role – which also assisted in other aspects of running the group – for three years straight (six terms), and then took six months in the primary leadership role.

After highschool, when I got a job, it quickly became known that if someone needed extra help, or called in sick, I could always be relied upon to come in – to the point where I had to arrange to be the last person called, because it was known that if everyone else said no, I could be relied upon to say yes because, well, someone had to step up and do it. I became one of the primary trainers for new employees, and ended up holding titles like crew leader and shift manager even though I had no interest in them.

            Then I started my own business. If I have to elaborate on that, you should do some research into what running a business entails.

            Over the course of July, I joined a community of people awaiting the release of a game called Chronicles of Elyria. I joined a Kingdom, then a Duchy, then a specific County, and I began working with the Count on helping with organization and lore writing for both the County and Duchy, making it clear all along that I had no interest in a leadership role. Then my Count went ahead and named me Chancellor of our county which essentially means I can speak for him when he’s not around to do so, both in the County and the Duchy.

            Then, this past weekend, an event launched for the Elyria community which involves a mini-game that will be running for the rest of the summer that allows people to control some of the lore for the world and – remarkably – affords people (like me) who haven’t already bought into the game to earn a free copy of the game for when it releases. From the moment the game was released, it was clear a great deal of teamwork and organization would be required, and my Kingdom quickly got to work on that. However, I soon noticed that everyone doing the organizing had a game package – and since the game works differently for those without game packages, I stepped up to share my knowledge and help out. The next day, some people in my Duchy were talking about Duchy-specific organization and, well, no one else was stepping up to the plate, so I did so and laid out the groundwork.

            And then it occurred to me that, once again, I was falling into leadership roles. So, I started looking back at my history, wondering what the cause was for this. Why was it that someone like me, who would much rather sit back and silently watch, who has a very hard time making decisions, and who really dislikes being a leader – why did I keep becoming a leader?

            The answer, it turns out, is remarkably simple. No one else was doing it, and so I stepped up to the task. Because someone had to do it. In each and every case, something needed to be done, and I did it because no one else was.

            And I realized that a leader is exactly that. Someone who steps up and takes the reins when no one else does. It isn’t something that makes me happier about being doomed to leadership, but it at least makes me more accepting of my fate.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Individual Experiences

            When you look at the world, sometimes it’s hard to believe that society is as functional as it is. Yes, it could be much better, but it could be far worse as well. It all comes down to one thing: the perspective of each individual person in the world.

            When it comes right down to it, everyone has their own unique experience – and, therefore, perspective – of life, the universe and everything. That doesn’t mean there aren’t similarities. In fact, there are so many similarities that we fool ourselves into thinking that everyone knows certain things that are intrinsic to our lives.

            Each of us builds up our own little world around ourselves and core values. When someone doesn’t understand something that is a major part of our lives, we’re often shocked. Not with things we know are aberrant – for example, I never expect people to know what LARP is, and several years of my life centred around that. On the other hand, when people don’t know what chainmaille is (and I’ve encountered a large number of them), I’m truly shocked. It’s not only something that’s historical, but it’s present in a large number of books and movies. Plus, it’s even used for modern day purposes by butchers and loggers (and some police forces, I’m given to understand).

            Now, for me, chainmaille is obviously a normal thing – since I make it for a living. Before that it was a hobby, but even prior to then I knew what it was. I’ve been obsessed with fantasy since The Hobbit was read to me when I was five – you can’t get very far in that genre without knowing what chainmaille is. So when someone doesn’t know, I suddenly have to adjust my perspective to accommodate someone who hasn’t read any of my favorite books, seen my favorite movies, or been exposed to any of the things I’m most passionate about. And it’s not because the opportunity hasn’t been available to them, but because their interests are so vastly different than mine that they’ve never investigated them.

            That’s simply from my own experience – everyone has interests that others don’t understand. Everyone has their own perspective and their own ways of looking at the world. Everyone has a great many things that they don’t know about and can’t even begin to understand.

            Yet, somehow, society holds together. In spite of vastly different views on everything from... well, just on everything (the list is too long and I’m tired), the world functions. I think that’s incredible. I mean, yes, as a totally accepting person, I think that’s how it should be, but the world in general isn’t an accepting place.

            So, how is it that, in a world where there are so many people less accepting than me who, were they in my place, would say to kill everyone who doesn’t know what chainmaille is (to be fair, there are far worse ideas), how is it that the human race has survived everyone’s individual experiences? How has society not collapsed?

            It’s hard to believe.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Experiences

            Looking back over my blog posts, I’m astounded at how rarely I mention my LARPing days. This should probably change, as it was what my whole life revolved around for close to four years.

            Firstly, for the uninitiated, what is LARPing? It’s short for Live Action Role Playing. The quickest way if describing it is that once a week I’d dress up in a costume and go out to a park with a group of friends. We would then proceed to have fights using pool noodle swords and yell the magic spells that our fantasy-based game (Amtgard) had. It’s a bit more complicated than that, with playing the roles of characters and solving puzzles in quests, but that’s the general gist of it.

            It sounds strange, I know. When our local group was first founded and my best friend and I were invited to join, we almost didn’t go. But we figured that it was worth trying out – and it sure sounded safer than the fighting with wooden swords we’d been doing – so we went and we were hooked. We both became part of the core of the group and were soon heavily involved in running the group.

            If I had gone with my initial “that’s weird” instinct and never joined, I would have missed out on some amazing experiences. Two, in particular, come to mind. I think of them as being “movie experiences” because... well, they felt like I was in the middle of a movie. They felt like they shouldn’t be possible, yet they were happening.

            The first happened at an event called Battle of the Dens, hosted by the largest Amtgard group in Canada. Hosted on a large, forested private property, this event allowed us to have night-time battles. As I am a sneaky type, and played as an assassin, this suited me quite well. One night, a group of us ran a mini-game were one team played the a caravan and the other – a team of assassins – set up ambushes. It was wonderful, but one moment stands out the most. The team of six assassins were stalking our prey, creeping through a field of long grass under the starry sky. I stuck my head above the level of grass to get my bearings, and saw nothing but a field of grass stretched out before me. Then another head popped up. And another. Just like raptors in Jurassic Park. One by one, we vanished back down into the grass. It was amazing.

            Still, as great as that was, it doesn’t compare in outright feeling to a three-way battle we had one day. This was during a summer when our group had its largest number of members. There were three teams of about ten people each, competing with each other. Being clever and strategic, my team was letting the other two weaken each other until they caught on to what we were doing. Then they teamed up against us. Our small team was down a hill from the other two, and I was at the head. The enemy army, twice the size of ours, came pouring down the hill. I stepped out into the fray, swinging to the left and right, cutting down my enemies as they streamed past me to engage with the rest of my army. It was a glorious moment, straight out of a movie, and before I had done it myself I never believed it was possible to survive an onslaught like that. But, I did, and we won – and though it was “only” part of a game, to this day it remains one of the greatest moments of my life.

            Yet, every now and then, I wonder, what would have happened if I’d decided not to try out this game that I first thought was crazy – as do most people I tell about it. How many experiences would I have missed out on, just because I thought it might be embarrassing to dress up and go sword-fighting in public? Or because I was shy and uncertain about joining a group of mostly strangers? Some things we just have to try to find out what they’re really like. Otherwise we can miss out on the most important experiences of our lives.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Fish in a Jar

            Today I shall share with you a story from my LARPing days. Earlier this year, I told you about how I sometimes make joking suggestions that people take too seriously. This is a story about that, too.

            Firstly, for those who don’t know, LARPing stands for Live Action Role Playing. The one I was involved with is called Amtgard – a fantasy themed game (surprise, surprise). If that still means nothing to you, once a week my friends and I went to a park in costumes and beat each other up with pool noodle swords. Kind of like Dungeons and Dragons live. It’s significantly more awesome than it sounds.

            So, as part of this game, sometimes quests are run – usually only during events with guests from other groups because more people is better for quests and they take a lot of energy to put together. During a quest, people are split into two groups PCs and NPCs. NPCs are the people running the quest – the monsters and characters that tell the story – while the PCs are the players who try to solve the puzzles and defeat the monsters.

            Now, for years, as core members of our group, my best friend and I were usually NPCs, if not the people writing the quest in the first place. This time, however, we were PCs – which, to us, was an opening to have a lot of fun.

            For a few months, we’d been planning a couple of new characters to play – a pair of eccentric gnomes. These characters had no interest in solving the quest. No, they just tended to be around, sometimes helping, sometimes throwing a wrench in the gears. We planned all kinds of antics, such as fishing in a pile of leaves or setting up a “machine” that enchanted weapons (which really had one of us inside casting the spells). The overall intent was to mess with people enough to make them think we were NPCs rather than PCs and have them wondering what our part was in the quest.

            Well, we got word in advance that this quest was taking place during a fair scenario – where there would be games to play and prizes to be won. How perfect was that? All we had to do was come up with some items that we could trade to people, or give them as prizes, with the hope that they’d be fooled into thinking they were some significant part of the quest.

            I have no memory of how the conversation led to it, but this is where – after the laugh I have that indicates my idea is to ridiculous to do – I made the suggestion I never thought would happen.

            Fish in jars.

            However, as usual, I underestimated my best friend’s willingness to run with my crazy ideas. The idea stuck. Why? Because it was perfect for the scenario. In a quest situation, why on earth would there be live fish if it wasn’t an important part of the quest? We would hand them out to people and they’d go insane trying to figure out what they were for. What more could we wish for?

            So, the project began. We went and scouted fish prices, then went to the grocery store and bought four jars of baby food. It was while my friend was eating his way through these jars that I giggled and said the next thing I shouldn’t have.

            I said, “You know, people might ask what the fish is for, and if they do, you should do this.” I proceeded to mime drinking the contents of one of the jars.

            I should have known. He looked me in the eye and declared that he would do it. He then said that he hated me, because he didn’t want to do it, but it was too perfect an opportunity to miss.

            And so, on the day of the event, we went out and bought our fish. We bought feeder fish because of a combination of them being cheap, and that they were intended to have short lives and we had no idea what would happen to them once they were given away. My guilty conscience – still protesting at the plan to swallow a live fish – hoped that they might end up living a better life than that of a bigger fish’s meal.

            We sorted out four fish into their four jars – leaving the lids loose when we could to keep oxygen in the water – and headed for the quest. The game started, and we set to work. One by one, we went up to random people (one of them even an NPC), asking riddles or offering trades – then presented them with live fish.

            They had no idea what to make of them. The expressions on their faces were priceless. Luckily, no one asked what they were for.

            We were having so much fun messing around that I honestly have no idea what was going on with the rest of the quest. At some point, monsters attacked, and the carefree gnomes hopped inside a protective circle and watched the battle. Then the quest was over.

            The best part, though, is that during the quest, one girl had traded her way into owning all four of the fish. She told us how delighted she was with them and that she planned to take them home to the states with her and keep them as pets. It was wonderful – if not for that, I would likely still feel guilty about those fish to this day.

            At the same time, I’m a little sad that no one asked what the fish were for.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Three Years of Blogging!

            Three years of weekly blogs! Wow, and to think I even said from the start that I might have to cut down to less frequent posts. I’ve considered it numerous times, but for some reason I just keep puttering on and finding something to blog about. Of Dice and Glen has helped a lot, taking the pressure off one week of the month. Perhaps I should designate another monthly post as something, like book reviews... I’m not sure I can get my hands on enough books for that, though.

            Anyway, it’s been a good three years here in the blogosphere. Sure, I’ve had some off weeks, but who doesn’t? I’ve covered everything from running a small business to philosophy – I even sneak a peek at world events sometimes. Hmmm, no sports though... unless LARPing counts. I’m gonna say it does, since that’s the closest I’m likely to get.

            So, here’s to 2016 and another year of fantastic (well, at least some of the time) blogs! Happy New Year, everyone. I think this’ll be a good one.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

In Praise of The Ring Lord

            You know, I really must take a moment to praise the unsung heroes of Ringcrafts: the wonderful staff of The Ring Lord.

            When I first started making chainmaille, way back in 2005, I started off by making a shirt for the LARP I was in. For that first tedious shirt, my friends and I made our own rings by coiling wire and cutting each individual ring with tin snips. Needless to say, this was an exhausting and painful process.

            Then I was told about The Ring Lord – a company specializing in providing chainmaille materials. I've never made my own rings since. Thanks to them, I can focus on creating and I get to use a much larger variety of rings than I otherwise would. On top of that, my products are cheaper because I don’t need to charge for the time it would take me to make my own rings.

            The company also has great customer service. There were a few times when there were items missing from my order (possibly lost in transit) and not only did they sort it out promptly – they upped the quality of the packaging for future shipments. I haven’t had anything missing since. On top of that, they recently moved to Toronto, which is awesome because it’s far closer to home (a couple of my friends even work there now). I placed an order on Monday, it shipped out on Wednesday and arrived on Thursday. It was wonderful!

            So, anyway, The Ring Lord deserves a lot of credit. Without them, Ringcrafts would never have started and it would never have come as far as it has. Thank you, Ring Lord staff!

            (Oh, and they also made armour for The Hobbit. And some NASA project. So that’s cool.)

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Halloween Costume Philosophy

            Halloween is an interesting concept for me these days. It pretty much passes by without me noticing it.

            When I was a kid, I loved Halloween, at least in concept. Dressing up in costumes was great and the candy was even better. The weather, on the other hand, was hit or miss. Sometimes it made the day more fun, while others it made me wonder why I liked Halloween so much.

            While there’s no denying the enjoyment of candy, I think that the greatest allure of Halloween is getting to dress up. Why? Because it’s fun for everyone! I think that’s why I don’t really notice the holiday any more, though. I mean, really, who only dresses up once a year?

            When I was in high school is when Halloween vanished for me, at around the same time as I started LARPing. Let’s face it – dressing up in a costume once a week trumps once a year. Even more so when sometimes we’d wear our costumes to school to promote our group.

            Now, with Ringcrafts going to conventions or renaissance festivals nearly every month, there are times when I look around me and wonder why people aren't in costumes.

            Or are they?

            Perhaps it’s the everyday clothes that people wear that are the true costumes. They are worn as an effort to fit in and to avoid offending social expectations.

            Could it be that Halloween is the one day of the year that people feel comfortable in taking off their costumes and letting their true selves show?

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Understanding Phobias

            I have often felt that most people don’t understand the term “phobia”. The general meaning is understood – a phobia is a fear. But, if it’s a fear, why not just say “fear” instead of “phobia”?

            The reason is that a phobia is much more than a fear – it is a type of anxiety disorder. Depending on the severity of the phobias, they can be very debilitating. As someone who suffers from a number of them, I would know. That being said, the information I can give you is based off of my own experiences and may or may not reflect those of other people, but in the very least it can give you an idea of what having a phobia is like.

            The very worst part of having a phobia is knowing that it exists, because they are generally irrational fears. With a normal irrational fear, someone can use logic and explain to you how it is irrational and that helps you overcome the fear, but with a phobia, all it can do is make you aware that your response is entirely involuntary. There’s nothing worse than knowing that you can’t control your reaction to something you know you shouldn't be afraid of.

            Perhaps the best way to demonstrate this is with an example. One of my phobias that I discovered when I was a teenager was a fear of heights. But not all heights, no, just a certain type. I could easily jump down from a ten foot balcony or have LARP sword fights with my friends on the angled (and usually slippery) pavilion roofs at the park, but to get up to that roof I had to walk across the narrow sides of two-by-fours which I discovered I could only do if I was holding on to something.

            Now, I know, that seems perfectly logical and is an intelligent safety precaution, which is true, but what struck me was that I actually couldn't move if I wasn't holding on to something. I have an excellent sense of balance and I had every confidence that I could even run across those two-by-fours without falling, but my body refused to move.

            Logic told me I would be safe; I had the confidence and the skill, but I still couldn't do it. This is the difference between a phobia and a fear. Here is a picture of the closest I ever got to defeating that phobia:

            It was taken as part of a series of pictures where I was having LARP dagger fights with my best friend everywhere. Of all the pictures, this was the only one that was posed (including one where we were fighting while standing on either end of a teeter-totter) because I couldn't stay standing up long enough to fight.

            I shouldn't say that logic is entirely useless in regards to phobias. It is wonderful for making them worse. There is one very common mistake that people make when trying to help someone with a phobia, and that is to give them logic. “Why are you afraid of X? Don’t you know that Y, which you have no problem with, has far more bacteria?” To which my response is, “Gee, thanks, now my phobia won’t let me touch X or Y!”

            In fact, being a logical person and having a phobia is probably the worst combination there is. One of my worst phobias is raw meat. Somewhere along the lines, I picked up that raw meat carried all kinds of bad... something. I don’t even know what it is that I'm afraid of, but I know I can’t touch raw meat. Or anything that raw meat touches. Or that that touches. It’s like there’s a force-field.

            Colleen and I went to the local Farmer’s Market a few weeks ago and we bought a couple pounds of bacon. It was nearly a traumatising experience for me and worse for Colleen once I pointed out to her what had happened (she makes every possible effort to not agitate my phobias. Isn't she wonderful?). The lady at the shop handled the bacon with her bare hands, which she then used to wrap the bacon before putting it on the counter. To clarify this in my phobia’s terminology, the bacon contaminated the lady’s hands, which contaminated the paper that was now, by my expectation, supposed to be preventing the bacon from contaminating anything else.

Good job there.

            Moving on, Colleen paid the woman, who took the money and gave change with the same contaminated hands. Taking the contaminated change, Colleen’s hands became contaminated, as did her wallet and everything in it when she put the money inside. Then, on the way home, Colleen brushed her hair out of her eyes with her contaminated hands...

            And that is how phobia logic works! It took every ounce of my self control and mental re-routing to stop my phobia from preventing me from handling money ever again (because I don’t know how much of it has been passed through hands that have handled raw meat). To be fair, that’s a pretty powerful phobia, but it should at least give you an idea what having one is like (if you don’t already have one).

            So, what can you do to help someone with a phobia if logic doesn't work? The best suggestion I have is to leave them to take care of themselves and to respect that their fears are rooted so deeply that it is more than a fear – it is an involuntary, often paralysing, reaction. People who know they have phobias know what precautions to take to prevent them from being too problematic (such as marrying a wonderful person who’s willing to eliminate all those spiders that want to kill them). In my experience, all you can do by trying to make the phobias go away is to make them worse.

            I hope this has helped you to understand phobias a bit better and that, if you have phobias, it hasn't made them worse.

            To that one despicable person out there who just opened their wallet and started rubbing all their money on a raw steak, I hope that whatever it is that my phobia insists I’m afraid of gets you instead of me.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.