Bringing Back Memories

Yesterday our church had a special "Horizon" service. Horizon is their sports-and-outdoors ministry. They have netball and futsal teams that play against other teams and stuff like that, and also organise the outdoors stuff like hiking and skiing for those who are interested.

So yesterday they had a football day followed by the "special Horizon service" which took place of the regular evening service. I didn't go to the football thing but I did go to the service, which had an emphasis on "goals" and "athletics". They also looked at Timothy where it says stuff about goals and reaching for the prize or something.

They framed the service to relate to people who are into sports and appreciate athletics and competition. In other words, not me.

And halfway during the service, I got a flashback of my own athelitics-related traumatic memory that could very well be the source of my aversion to be a part of any formalised competetion to do with physical ability!

I was about seven or eight years old and it was one of those school athletic days where our school was competing against other schools. I had never been a sporty person, always preferring to stay indoors reading a book than be outdoors and running. But the teachers would put a lot of pressure on the students to compete, and I was one of those kids who took things that teachers said seriously. Not that I was a suck-up and wanted to impress the teachers or anything like that, but because I was a "true believer" and took to heart everything that adults told me. So when they urged the students to "support the school" and to have "school spirit" and all that rubbish, I took it to heart and considered it a duty to do that which I would normally choose not to, and to try my best.

So I participated in the relay race. And when I had the baton, I ran and ran, I ran as fast as I could which, although I knew wasn't very fast at all, it was faster than I had ever ran before. I was actually enjoying it, getting excited, thinking that I probably wasn't doing too bad! I had no idea how well I was doing compared to the competitors, I'm pretty sure I was completely oblivious to them, being completely absorbed in my own running, feeling that this was the best running I had ever done in my life. I get to the end and passed the baton on, where immediately I am confronted by one of my righteous team-members, who immediately begins lecturing me about how, as part of a team where others were relying on me, I should have at least put an effort into my running and how I should be ashamed of myself for not really even trying and how I let the team down.

I remember that from that moment, I told myself that I'd never, ever let a teacher use "school spirit" and "duty" to guilt me into participating in one of those athletic days, whether it was an external thing against other school or an internal thing against team houses. I didn't care. I had ever since been adverse to any kind of formalised competition, as well as to running. I also, perhaps unjustly since (with the exception of one other non-sports related incident where, again, she was being self-righteous and telling me off about something that she didn't understand) she never did anything to me that I could criticise in the coming years, I had a strong dislike of that girl. (Her going out with the boy I had a crush on in highschool probably didn't help, either, actually.)

On a brighter note, they talked about the story of Dick and Rick Hoyt, which always twinges my heartstrings.

Writer's Sports

So I mentioned I'd write about writer's sports so... it was fun! Lots of games, lots of lowbrow humour and making fun of the teachers... it was first years vs second years vs teachers vs all-stars (all-stars being those who don't really fit into any of the three previous categories). I played for second-years (although, actually, I only participated in one game) and second-years won! Wooo! (Just so you know, the teachers never win.)

This sememster it was organised and run by a couple of the students (because I guess the teachers decided to stop doing it or something? I'm not sure), Mullet and Mace, who are also in my Small Press Publishing class. (Mullet doesn't actually have a mullet.) But... anyway, the games, (which were things like short story relay - that was the one I participated in - writing limericks based on a picture - other stuff that they only had a short amount of time to come up with) were lots of fun. On one game, one of the guys, Psychic, burst out in song of "Every sperm is sacred" by Monty Python (he had to write a speech for the Catholic Mothers against Condoms party) which everyone proceeded to join in.

The after-party is probably worth mentioning, too, mostly because I got to meet and talk to a couple of people who I had seen around but hadn't had a chance to talk to, before. Plus an odd comment from Mace which probably didn't mean anything.

Random stuff and Magic

Not much to report. Well... I have Writer's Sports tonight at my TAFE! It's a bit like Theatre Sports but with writing instead of theatre. I'm anticipating some fun so I'll let you know how it goes, although I haven't decided if I want to compete, yet, or not. I'm sure you'd be interested in hearing about non-church related activities for once.

I've been invited to a party on Saturday but I haven't decided if I want to go, yet, or not. I probably won't decide until on the day.

I'm also going to this... women's afternoon tea thing on Sunday. And, yes, it's a church-related activity.

Well, I guess that's it. I just felt like blogging right now. There are going to be people going through the house today, as there seems to be every now and then what with the house being on sale. To be honest, it kind of stresses me out, having strangers wander through the house and looking in my room while I'm feeling self concious about the holes in my unflattering places in my trackies but still being too lazy to bother getting dressed in my outside-in-public clothes, and me being too stressed to do something relaxing OR to do homework!

My bosses are in Vanuatu at the moment so I don't have any work for this week, either.

Oh, I've also been playing this game, Academagia which is a lot of fun, and yet I'm not sure if I'd recommend it to others. It's just that you do have to buy it but it doesn't come with a Free-Trial or Demo version like most casual games these days, so it's a bit of a gamble and I don't think it'd be for everyone. I decided to give it a go, I've been trying to save money lately but I did have my very first payment not that long ago for my new job, and so I thought I'd treat myself.

And it's really intimidating at first, you're throw straight in the deep end and the amount of information that you come across is overwhelming, not being quite sure which info is important that you need to pay attention to and remember, which information is just world-building, and which information is okay to wait until later for you to get familiar with it, with most of the gameplay you're having to work out yourself. It's probably a good thing that there isn't a demo version because no one would buy it with how intimidating it is at the beginning. Not that if you did buy it, you'd regret it, because having spent money on it, you're more invested in giving it a go, which means you'll push through that initial information overload, and once you get the hang of it, it's immensely fun and the replayability factor is immense, with so much to learn about the world and the characters that you couldn't possibly discover playing through only once, and so many ways to play.