This post is rather heavy despite a cheery beginning. If you're having a tough day, maybe leave the tab open for another time or bookmark it or set a reminder... It also discusses mental wellbeing, if that affects your decision in any way.
If you're a LARPer who lives in Scotland, you are probably familiar with that hour or so of energetic frothing and telling of stories after you leave site from a weekend event before everyone but the driver (and the person who feels guilty about leaving only the driver awake) crashes out with exhaustion. Perhaps you know it anyway; I've only ever travelled from here.
You tell each other stories nobody else saw and stories everybody else (in the car) saw and you add to each other's excitement about the event just gone and mentally go through all the ways in which this will/has impacted your character and what you'll do next and...
And it's a glorious feeling, that burning energy. A ghost of it carries for days past a good event, fuelling more froth, fic writing, letter writing, and what have you. It's the positive energy from a good LARP event.
It's been... Just over a year since the last time that happened to me, as best I can tell. I've done a number of events in between, in at least three systems, having played some, crewed others and even ran one. And it hasn't happened, it hasn't been the same.
I hasten to add that, with maybe one exception, this was not only not the fault of the people running the event - it wasn't anything within their control. For more than a year now, I've attended events and had to spend varying amounts of time curled up in a corner, alone or with a friend or two, hiding from the world. The time has varied a lot: from an hour or two, to... let's be conservative and say two thirds of an event (maybe I spent 5 hours IC in total over 3 days?). I've cried, I've slept, I've read books and eaten junk food and drunk alcohol...
And I will keep doing this. Because if I feel awful, I should look after myself, right? Sure, I may have paid a lot of money to be here, but, in the end, I paid it to have fun. And if the best, most "fun" thing I can do for myself at any given time is hide in bed and read, then damn right that's what I'll do.
I start to doubt this as I say it, of course. What if I could push through the awful moods, throw myself right in the game, really feel my character, the plot, other people and forget about my OC troubles? That was one of the main things I first loved about LARP after all... But really, I know all of this. I know that playing can do that and I know that, the more time I spend IC, the more fun I can have. It doesn't help me go outside and talk to people any more than just wanting to. Or maybe it does, but it hasn't made a difference yet.
I'm sorry, but this story doesn't have a happy ending. This is where I am now.
Now, I'm starting to worry a little. Wonder if I should take a break from LARP or maybe crew more or whether, if I do that right now, I'll never go back and never feel like that again. I don't know if it's indicative of a larger issue and, if so, what that is or how to address it. My work has a lovely (by the looks of it) Employee Assistance Programme, but I can't imagine calling their councillors up to go "I just haven't been having as much fun with LARP as I used to". I honestly can't imagine anything they can do to help me that wouldn't introduce, on balance, more new stresses to my life than benefits. But...
I want my hobby back.
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