I was trying so hard to please myself...

[beled_el_djinn]

Tonight I went to the WPI practice for the first time in way too long and while I'm as sore as if I spent a whole weekend as an NPC, I feel pretty darned good.
I must admit to some trepidation with my decision to attend practice - in the few times I've been back to Realms events, I've always felt the awful weight of everyone's ideas on who I am, what they think I am capable of, etc... and I found it hard to live up to my weird legend. But tonight, I think for the first time in, what, 15 years?, I didn't get the "Oh, you're Meerkat!" reaction that I've come to dread, and I can't even describe how awesome that felt. It was nice to be just a face in a crowd of mostly n00bs and earn people's respect based on my (rusty) skills - Oh, Accelerant how you have wronged me! - and not my reputation.
I've got a lot to re-learn, and even more to learn, but I think I've found a great group of folks who can help me with that. So it looks like for the foreseeable future, my Mondays will be spoken for.

Comments

[mighty-1.livejournal.com]

Are they still having practice? I thought I heard it had died out, but I guess it's a new school year so people may be returning.

If it's a good practice again, maybe I will show up some time too.

[beled-el-djinn.livejournal.com]

It seems to be going pretty strong - there were about 20 people there last night and according to what I heard that is a standard-ish number. They are all new (to me anyway) however, I don't think there was anyone there who was playing when I last played. That being said, there are some surprisingly good fighters doing the training, so I think it is a pretty worthwhile practice.

Right now they are in the "we're only fighting with single long swords" phase of things to get the incoming freshmen up to speed and it is primarily 1 on 1 fights with a little bit of line work. The emphasis seems to be on getting folks comfortable with taking their hits and rudimentary field tactics, which is a nice refresher for me, seeing as how I haven't had to call my hits in far too long.