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Feb. 16th, 2016 07:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stitchwhichTwo weekends ago I drove for five hours to attend an SCA event called "Atlantian University" - a daylong classroom event with (usually) 8-12 classrooms set up to host 1-2 hour classes about medievally-related subjects throughout the day. As well as sundry "how to do your SCA job" ones thrown in along the way. (The five hours back was much harder on me than I expected. Perhaps 'ten-hour daytrip drives' are not as much of a good idea as they were when I was younger.)
One of my Apprentices rode with me as well as my oldest BFE (Best Friend Ever), who kept the conversation going by asking the occasional off-beat question. One she asked my Apprentice was, "Where do you see yourself five years from now?" and it hit me pretty hard - harder than it did the respondent.
I haven't been thinking about "The Future" for a very long time. Not in any useful manner, at any rate. To tell the truth, I've never expected to actually reach 'the future', old age, in any case. My health never lent itself to the making of plans or of envisioning such a thing as a real possibility I'd have to deal with in my life.
The question has caused me to look at our home, our hobby, and our finances in a new light. For example, I'd been haphazardly clearing out this and that for the last couple of years after seeing what my adult friends had to deal with when their parents passed on and thinking about what it would be like for our children to have to pack up/clear out our home once we did too - but now, well now I'm looking at it and thinking more along the lines of "what will it be like to have to live with this stuff for the rest of a long old age? Do I want to? Do I even look at most of this anymore? Use much of it any more? Do I want to settle for this item or that one instead of reaching for something which would light up my (or Bossman's) eyes when I saw it every day? And what about when we, as some of our friends have, hit the "we're not going SCA camping any longer, nor schlepping all that medieval furniture around" stage? In all honestly, that isn't too far off - I can't see us being willing to do so in, say, five or six years. Not at the level that we currently do. By Pennsic 50 Bossman will be 69 and I'll 64... loading the truck full of wooden furniture for a two week long vacation just doesn't seem all that inspiring in that future.
It's very odd. I have never - ever - needed to consider my own 'old age'. I trained myself out of that sort of daydreaming when I was a teenager and was diagnosed with my heart condition and its limitations. After it failed and was magically corrected, multiple surgeries kept me focused on the 'now', and then my cancer struck. And four years later while I was still under treatment his did. Again, the 'now', the 'let's get through this' mode was predominate.
And now I have a real future with no plans and no goals. It is rather intimidating but exciting all blended together.
One of my Apprentices rode with me as well as my oldest BFE (Best Friend Ever), who kept the conversation going by asking the occasional off-beat question. One she asked my Apprentice was, "Where do you see yourself five years from now?" and it hit me pretty hard - harder than it did the respondent.
I haven't been thinking about "The Future" for a very long time. Not in any useful manner, at any rate. To tell the truth, I've never expected to actually reach 'the future', old age, in any case. My health never lent itself to the making of plans or of envisioning such a thing as a real possibility I'd have to deal with in my life.
The question has caused me to look at our home, our hobby, and our finances in a new light. For example, I'd been haphazardly clearing out this and that for the last couple of years after seeing what my adult friends had to deal with when their parents passed on and thinking about what it would be like for our children to have to pack up/clear out our home once we did too - but now, well now I'm looking at it and thinking more along the lines of "what will it be like to have to live with this stuff for the rest of a long old age? Do I want to? Do I even look at most of this anymore? Use much of it any more? Do I want to settle for this item or that one instead of reaching for something which would light up my (or Bossman's) eyes when I saw it every day? And what about when we, as some of our friends have, hit the "we're not going SCA camping any longer, nor schlepping all that medieval furniture around" stage? In all honestly, that isn't too far off - I can't see us being willing to do so in, say, five or six years. Not at the level that we currently do. By Pennsic 50 Bossman will be 69 and I'll 64... loading the truck full of wooden furniture for a two week long vacation just doesn't seem all that inspiring in that future.
It's very odd. I have never - ever - needed to consider my own 'old age'. I trained myself out of that sort of daydreaming when I was a teenager and was diagnosed with my heart condition and its limitations. After it failed and was magically corrected, multiple surgeries kept me focused on the 'now', and then my cancer struck. And four years later while I was still under treatment his did. Again, the 'now', the 'let's get through this' mode was predominate.
And now I have a real future with no plans and no goals. It is rather intimidating but exciting all blended together.
