Tag: hobbies

Way Too Quiet Again

I haven’t written much here in…holy hell, six months.

Ugh. That’s…not good. Sorry about that. Despite that, there’s been decent traffic, but it’s all been for the fitness-related stuff I wrote about in the past. Which is great.

But, well, I haven’t really been training like I should. I don’t feel like I can talk about fitness because I haven’t been doing very much.

Well, not intentionally.

You see, since I got deep into HEMA a while back, I’ve been really focused on that. The problem is, equipment is expensive. However, being part of Schola Saint George, we have other options.

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HEMA And Health: Any Benefit In Old-Time Swordfighting?

Derks24 / Pixabay

Recently, a friend suggested I start talking a little bit about HEMA. It’s really to be expected, what with the whole Barbarian thing going on here.

My initial reaction was to reject it. After all, while I use the imagery of a barbarian here, I want to focus on real-world applicable activities. But I decided to delve a little deeper and see if there were any applications we could use in our modern world.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term “HEMA,” it stands for Historical European Martial Arts. Generally, it’s thought of as a whole set of historical sword fighting methods, though it also incorporates unarmed techniques like pugilism and wrestling.

Other than those last two, can the modern Barbarian derive any real benefits from learning how to swing a sword? Continue reading “HEMA And Health: Any Benefit In Old-Time Swordfighting?”

The Long, Hard Road: Mastering Skills Isn’t Meant To Be Easy

 

ArtisticOperations / Pixabay

Mastering skills is something I’ve never felt I was good at. It doesn’t matter what the skill was, I just wasn’t one to get it. You see, it took me way longer than I care to admit for me to learn that anything really worth doing wasn’t going to be easy.

Back in the day, I wanted to do great things, but I rarely put forth the effort to accomplish them, mostly because I got sick of it pretty quickly. Why? Because I wasn’t an instant grandmaster.

In truth, though, I haven’t much gotten past that despite intellectually knowing better.

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Reevaluating Biases

If there’s one group of people in this world that I’ve given more grief to than Justin Bieber fans, it’s hipsters.

Far too often, I encounter them and immediately rule them as pretentious snobs who are more about virtue signaling than anything else. To be honest, I stand by that assessment.

But then I think about how society is fragile, how civilization is a delicate glass construct that could shatter at any given moment. Should that happen–and I’m not saying it will, mind you, or that I want it to, just that it might–do you know the one group of people that will probably help civilization return more than any other?

It ain’t necessarily the preppers. It’ll be the hipsters.

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Finding Balance

Recently, a friend of mine was talking with me. He told me he’d been reading stuff here and he was concerned.

I asked him why, and he responded, “Because the stuff you’re talking about, it can build up in someone. Over time, they can become too aggressive and you’re not talking about ways to ramp that down.”

It’s a fair point. I haven’t been.

So, I need to step back and fix this. After all, I can tell you all day long that despite being Barbarians, you still have to play by society’s rules, but if you don’t know how to ramp things back (and most of you actually do), then you’re screwed.

You need to have a way to find balance between the naked aggression many of us feel in our very souls and the need to step back and let things either unfold as they must or just fizzle out.

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