I have to admit, the thing that moved me most about Potlatch this year had nothing to do with writing, or the exalted book of honor. It was this awesome "new" thing I discovered--LARPing! Yes, yes, I realize that LARPing's been around forever, and yes, my hubby used to do it when we were teens and I thought it was a little too nerdy even for me. But! This was parlor LARPing, with no boffer weapons or anything. OK, the boffer weapons were probably cool, and I just missed the boat back then. Not that he ever invited me or anything.

But I digress! My main point here is that LARPing is super fun. Way more fun than just sitting around talking. Which says a lot, coming from me.

At Potlatch, there was this extremely competent guy, jhkimrpg, running the LARP. This seemed to be a crucial aspect of the whole thing being so fun.

Oh, for the one or two people out there that didn't discover LARPing before me, LARP stands for Live Action Role Playing. Basically, the way parlor LARPing works is one person ahead of time does a ton of work (or looks around on the Internet or buys a game) and sets up characters and goals and a rough plot structure. Then everyone shows up, moves some furniture around to represent sick bays and spaceship controls or whatnot, and is assigned a character. Then all the characters are let loose to interact with each other, trying to achieve their private goals and protect their secrets, while only knowing the public info of the other characters.

The fun, for me, was in the acting (I got to be a starship captain!). It reminded me a lot of being a small child and running around with my friends playing pretend. Except that everyone's got a fully mature intellect and developed social skills.

So now, I'm trying to round up about six local friends who would be willing to set aside their grown-up propriety and jump into the fun!

So, I just got back from the Potlatch literary science fiction convention. When I was there, I felt wonderful--interesting, vibrant, young. With no one but myself to clothe, feed, and keep track of, I felt like I was flying everywhere I went. Coming back to the ballast of my toddler's needs, our family's financial restrictions, and the relatively bland intellectual environment I've created for myself felt deflating, aging.

I've thought a lot about it, and I've decided that there's nothing wrong with my responsibilities as a mother, or with the homemaker career I've adopted since my child was born. Rather, I rediscovered a part of myself at that convention whom I've been neglecting, and life without her is drab and heavy by comparison. So, I've decided to seize every opportunity to draw out and nourish this bubbling, laughing, passionate intellectual I've recently become reacquainted with.  I think that she can co-exist comfortably with the cheese-sauce-stained Mommy; I don't have to choose between my love for and enjoyment of my family and giving expression to this long-lost person inside of me.

With this new decision to be more expressive and more adventurous in revealing my true self, I've done several fun and cool things since last weekend. One of which is starting this blog. I've been thinking about writing one for a few years, but have always stopped myself, never confident that I could be interesting or dedicated enough for it. But I decided, screw that! I might be boring, melodramatic, or narcissistic here, but it seems that if I'm going to be working on all this identity stuff, I ought to give myself permission to act like a teenager. It seems like it will be necessary to be awkward at first, and I decided that's OK.

So, here are the other things I did so far in my effort to be more interesting to myself and to have more fun. Yesterday, we had lunch with my husband at this burger joint/batting cages combination place. When we had eaten there before, I had looked longingly at the slow-pitch softball cage, but, having no memory of ever swinging a bat at a ball before, I was sure I would miss every one and feel stupid. Also, it would be a waste of money. But this time, with my experience at Potlatch fresh in my mind, I announced to my husband that I was going to do it. So, after my husband explained about buying a token and asking for a beginner's bat, I did it. And I didn't miss every one. I actually hit six of the twenty balls. Not bad.

Earlier in the week, my husband spotted a Streetfighter II arcade game at the restaurant where we were eating lunch. I noticed myself wishing that I was the kind of person who would be willing to "waste" the 50 cents playing it, even though I wasn't good enough to keep the game going very long. Thinking again of my Potlatch self-expression goal (and with some gentle encouragement from my hubby), I overcame my fear of embarrassment at how crappy I would play, got some change, and jumped in. It was fantastic. I even learned how to throw the cool blue fireball and to fling my virtual opponent down over my shoulder to thunk! on the ground. Whenever my screen avatar flexed his muscles in victory, I joined him.

Something cool think I've noticed about this self-expression thing, other than the joy I feel and the melting away of my resentments about the various drains on my free time, is that the people around me seem to feel freer to express themselves, too. I seriously doubt that my husband would have played Streetfighter II if I hadn't wanted to jump in. And the college kid who was serving us and who made change for the machine went from being a standard, polite waiter-guy to a friendly and enthusiastic real-guy after we started playing. Perhaps I'll end up with more genuine and close friends out of this.

I think all this is going to be a great influence on my writing, too. I'm already thinking about how I can transform this memory I have of doing cannonballs off of the diving board with the adolescent boys at a stifling lawn-party at my in-laws' into a short story. I'll post more if it develops into something.

In other news, I'm going to be looking into using Kool-Aid as a temporary blue hair dye. I heard that it works--we'll see.