Faction Night: The Fourth, the Fifth.

I’ve fallen behind on writing these posts, or rather in writing these posts down in word and posting them to the blog. I’ve been writing versions of them in my head for weeks now.

Faction Night has been one of the major ways that I’ve been keeping track of what the day of the week is. Over the last month, I’ve managed to get my hands on a bunch of power tools necessary for getting a lot of the major work done on my apartment, which I’ve been struggling with for the last year.

In the last week or so, I’ve rebuilt the bones of my room – which included among other things taking apart and rebuilding my bed, my desk, creating a drafting table on wings, I’ve learned how to gather, preserve, identify, and then build from wood of various stages of greenness, and I’ve been taking assorted pictures of the whole process, so that eventually I could write about it all.

In addition to all this, the state of mind necessary to make all that possible, has been yielding some interesting results in terms of understanding why I do the things that I do. It is however, not the best state to be in while wanting to make weekly written updates on a blog. Such is life.

The Fourth Faction night marked the halfway point of the season. It also marked the shifting point for me. Before this, I had a really hard time with consistency. I would have these brilliant moments when I seemed like I was getting it, but then moments later I wouldn’t manage to get any countable score on the board. It was frustrating to me, and I imagine to others watching me, annoyed that I couldn’t seem to replicate in situ what I was achieving in practice. The phrase “where was that earlier” was oft repeated.

If you remember, last week I discovered that if I sang while I threw the knives, that my score improved. In week 4, I carried over the lesson, and sure enough, the results continued. I started winning rounds, and even when I wasn’t winning, the point difference in my losing scores was much lower.

At the same time that I am learning to throw knives and completely rebuild my apartment, I was also throwing my first ever art show. Trying to fit paintings, building supplies, not to mention everyday life stuff, in my car, in my schedule, and in my head, was all a little overwhelming. Things got damaged, I seemed way more disorganized than I actually was, and of course the stress wasn’t helpful. At the same time, I was having a great time. While in a long term, this state is and can be chaos, but there can be a moment when you are somehow managing to be productive in a way that you can actual feel and notice, where it can be thrilling and feel amazing. It’s the anxiety of it turning into the long-term that hilariously skews it.

By the end of Week 4, which is also when I finally managed to figure out the Facebook page where I could find the standings, I could see that I was moving up. No longer was I at the bottom of the group, but was steadily working my way up.

In week 5, I was mildly overwhelmed with everything, not in a bad way, but enough that I wasn’t my usual chatty socializing self. I had a brief moment when I worried about that enough that I forgot to sing, but then once I gave myself permission to not be a social butterfly for a night, but still concentrate on throwing, I managed to get back in the headspace.

It’s exciting to see myself actually improving at something like this. I often assume that I’m exaggerating my ability to do things, so seeing actual progress feels amazing. Even more so when a person in authority explicitly states it as well.

Sadly, a series of uncontrollable events meant that I had to miss last week. This week will be about catching up on the matches I missed, as well as getting in some more points in the hopes of really moving up in the ranks. I’ll report my final standings before the Championship night. To make up for missing a few posts too, there will be some fun posts and possibly video of me at In the Air, coming later.

If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet and you are in Ottawa, you really should. It’s a great place, and really is lots of fun.

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Faction Night: The Fourth, the Fifth.
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