Face The Enemy: The Autocannon - SRC G36c Gen 2 Review

I wrote a little review for one of my new toys.

Face The Enemy: The Autocannon - SRC G36c Gen 2 Review: "When the fifteen lead technical engineers of the Sunshine Rainbow Company got together at the crack of midnight on the thirteenth day of Feb..."

Herding with Landmines

A thought occurred to me today as I supped on my great Starbucks Americano. You can't herd with land mines.

Now, what I mean by that is that you can't punish yourself for not following the exact path you laid out for yourself. I mean, I look back on my life and yeah, I wish sometimes that things had gone differently. I wish something that fell apart had been stronger, I wish that today I could wake up to the world I had imagined then.

It's the core feeling of desire, or of vision even. It's a great thing to envisage an ideal world, with every smiling face you ever never wanted to lose and everything in that balance. That balance that should have been.

So, I failed, I'm willing to accept that. I should have been stronger when the chances were open, I should have found a way to make that world a reality but, and the point is this, I didn't. I did achieve other things, things I never would have planned or counted on. Where one thing fell down to my horror another sprung up proud and implacable. Everything I feared to lose is gone but I have other things now, in their place. Is there sense to that?

You can't herd with land mines. You can't write that pact in blood and expect it to stand. Things will come when you are ready for them.

So this leaves me trying to get back into writing, back into that old fight. When the next chances open before me I will be more prepared. And I can wait, like a wolf, I can wait.

A Seedling with Swords

Things are going well, they are going very well indeed. I have now officially upgraded this life of mine to seedling status, still vulnerable but growth is apparent and there's still so much left of it to do.

It was always my desire to bring fencing back into my life and it is slowly happening. I'm fencing at least once every week along with my outdoor training and while I'm very rusty it is quickly coming back to me.

Last weekend even saw me competing at the East Irish Open. I had decided to compete at the last moment, unsure of whether or not I was ready. But after some persuasion from one of the organizers who I met by chance at training last week I gave it a shot and what a shot it turned out to be.

I have a technique, a little mental thing I do at competitions ever since I started doing well. I visualize a rock at the center of an ocean and each of my breathes become a crash of waves upon it. Each wave washes away some stone, infinitely revealing a new skin. I did remarkably well, of course experiencing a little luck along the way. I managed to secure third place and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of the competition.

It was also fantastic to support and be supported by new club mates. It's a while since I have experienced that as my old club of DCU washed away to the four corners of the earth a long time ago.

But now, I feel I have a lot of time ahead of me with the sport I love and that makes me very happy indeed.