Adrian Faulkner's Blog, page 10
August 25, 2021
Strategy Meeting – The Climb #914
After several days of social and physical interactions, today I’m exhausted. My legs ache from all the walking and driving, and my eyes feel heavy with fatigue. This isn’t a surprise and I expect a few slow days as my body recovers.
Of course, I had to take the hire car back and then walk back across town. This took several hours. I did a load of thumbnail pictures for future editions of The Climb and took a few breaks when I found somewhere to sit down.
As I wa...
August 24, 2021
Summer Vacation 2021 – The Climb #913
I’m not sure when hiring cars became so bloomin’ expensive, but it meant that keeping the car much beyond Fightcamp wasn’t viable. But, I did want to get out of Swindon for the day and have a very compacted holiday, and so today was vacation day.
The idea behind today was to go to an area and hit up a lot of different places, compacting a week long holiday into a single day.
I love landscapes. One of the reasons I like goecaching is simply that wanderlust of seeing w...
August 23, 2021
The Road To Normalcy – The Climb #912
Today was the final day of Fightcamp. It’s been a strange event. The organisation has been great, yet my involvement has been minimal. I never did any fencing nor did I do any classes other than the one I taught. As my first event since the pandemic this has really been about connecting with people again. That’s been interesting and taken much more energy than I thought it would.
But I come away, reinvigorated into creating Swindon SOTS early next year, and whilst ...
August 22, 2021
Socialising In A Post Pandemic World – The Climb #911
Some of my friends have been to restaurants since the pandemic started. Some have been to pubs, even though they were quiet. But I have not been anywhere with crowds other than the local supermarket.
So to say that social interacting with people has been weird is an understatement.
Pre-pandemic I’d display introvert tendencies. I’d be actively engaged in conversation until I ran out of steam and then I’d take myself off somewhere to recharge.
Yet with this weeken...
August 21, 2021
Fightcamp 2021 – The Climb #910
Today has been weird. Today there has been people in my general vicinity and it’s been emotionally draining.
I’m glad that the first people I ran into were the two other instructors from School of the Sword.
“Hugging?” asked my friend Fran.
“What’s hugging?” I asked, thinking she was talking something HEMA related and forgetting that there was this thing we used to do.
My other friend, Emilia, is an expert on Covid… like, such an expert that she’s on the nightly n...
August 20, 2021
The Mad Dash – The Climb #909
I worked out the other day that I’ve not left Swindon in over a year. My last trip out of the town was to Uffington Horse back in early August 2020. Since then the only journeys I’ve taken are a couple of geocaching walks to the outskirts of the town, two jabs, and another trip across town to sell my car (who needed one with a pandemic on and nobody going anywhere). That’s in an entire year!
Today all that was about to change as I was due to head up to Coventry to...
August 19, 2021
Post Pandemic Social Anxiety – The Climb #908
On Friday I’m giving a workshop at this year’s Fightcamp. It’s a privilege to be asked and I hope it opens the doors for future training options. After the pandemic postponed the event for a year, I thought I’d lost my chance but I was asked again this year.
I like teaching. I think I’m pretty good at it. Once I get over my initial nerves, I find myself able to wing most of a lesson. In the past, I’ve even scrapped a lesson plan and produced something new on the...
August 18, 2021
Experiments In Productivity – The Climb #907
So the plan today was to work on the ONE THING I needed to get done today and see how fulfilled I felt at the end of it.
Normally I have a bunch of tasks, as well as daily activities like writing. I’ll roughly schedule them throughout the day and try and get them all done. Anything not completed gets rescheduled.
The downside to this is that the deep work – the stuff that needs a bit of focus – ends up getting put off and off. I’ve recently tried to combat this by ...
August 17, 2021
The One Big Thing – The Climb #906
Today was my first day back after a mini break. I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that after all the hassle getting my Twitter back only to then have issues fixing the PC – and hence stopping me launching the new projects I want to do – I just burnt up whatever mental fortitude I had left in the tank.
On the plus side, I’ve got someone having a look at it while I’m away at Fightcamp.
I also got a ton of stuff done today. Not only was there some catching up on ...
August 16, 2021
Fightcamp Announcement
As you may have seen over on Instagram, I’m pleased to announce I will be teaching at this year’s Fightcamp where I will be running a workshop on active use of the buckler, looking at various Italian systems.
I’ve run a version of this workshop at School of the Sword over the years and students have always reported back this has massively helped their sword and buckler. We’re all unfit and rusty after the pandemic break, so this will be a low energy workshop where we will mostly be working at f...
