A few weeks back, just before the NTSA AGM, I resigned from the board. I guess ten years is about as much as anyone ought to do on a committee, in fact I personally think I left it a few years too long. It means I get to go back to shooting again. But, like after any long slog at any job, I found I was rather burnt out, and was having a lot of trouble getting back to the line again. Enter Herself Indoors, who for a birthday gift, is sending me back to Kuortane for the training camp this year.
I went before, in 2007, and would have gone in 2008 but it didn’t run; so I’m looking forward to this. I’m hoping it will act as a mental reboot, and let me recapture some of what I lost sight of during all the legislative and political bleepstorm we’ve been dealing with for the last few years in Irish target shooting — namely, actually shooting!
Myself and Daniel have been talking about our preparations and post-trip plans, Daniel’s done all of the travel logistics (thanks Daniel!) and I’m hoping that with the benefit of the 2007 trip’s experience, we’ll take away more than we did last time and recover from the return-home shock better than I did last time round.
There is something about going to a place like Kuortane for a training camp like this one that is deeply satisfying on a level that’s hard to explain — unless you’ve done something that demands absolute consistent perfection of you, and which pushes you to your absolute limit in some area. And if you have done something like that (whether it be Michelin-level cooking or high-level martial arts or really deep mathematics or whatever), then I don’t need to explain it, because you already know what I mean better than I can explain it.
For the first time in a long time, I’m really looking forward to getting back to the line again 🙂