Already that time of year again? GISHWHES 2014

It’s that time again. When I get more crazy than I generally am, do things I would not normally do, thrust myself into the very depths of my weirdness.

 

It’s GISHWHES 2014(Greatest International Scavenger Hunt The World Has Ever Seen), and I am a GISHER. This is my third year captaining my team, CrowsinStarships and I can only say at this point I can’t wait. That as usually I am marginally scared, and that I can’t wait.

 

I’m sure once again I will have to explain to my family and friends it’s not a cult despite my calling Misha Collins overlord all the time. No seriously. It’s not a cult.

 

Moving on…

 

Every year this gets better and better for me. I have Chronic health issues, and to be honest the first year I did GISHWHES I thought “What in the FUCK have I gotten myself into?” For the last two years, despite it generally making me ill and taking weeks to recover, I do this anyway. I only usually do an item or two, easier ones, and then I keep track of the team list and submissions,

 

It’s worth getting sick because for one week I feel like a normal human being. That I can do what every other person can do. Somehow I put the vertigo and the migraines and the body pain on hold and somehow I just do it.

 

The best part of it for me though is getting to share in a team. Meeting friends, Watching my team mates make amazing art under the oddest of circumstances out of the weirdest things you can imagine. GISHWHES seems to love food clothing. Cheese, toast, kale, tea bags…and yes people wear them, and wear them well. The idea is not not buy anything but create from what you have, or what you can scavenge, Hello, scavenger hunt.

 

GISHWHES has taught me I can do things I never thought I would or could do. I’ve called asking for Marching bands, news stories, made a video begging Astronauts to out my teams name in space. (That sounds far more distinguished…the item was to have the astronauts say hi to your team and hold a sign with your team’s name on it. COME ON. Seriously I loved space as a kid!.) I’ve written congressmen, foreign diplomats.

 

In life there are no limits, and when you learn that there are no limits to what you can do…then GISHWES takes it a step further by its many Random Acts of Kindness items. You learn to take the shy self you shed calling begging for a billboard, you take this new person and begin working for, volunteering, anything you can do to make the world better.

 

Death to Normalcy. It’s the point of GISHWHES. Art, fun, mayhem, exhaustion, hunger, weird conversations, sitting in a thunderstorm trying to make a paper crane.

 

Death to normalcy is something else as well. It’s death to the normal complacent nature all of us have grown too comfortable with. Death to that part of you that walks past homeless kittens, ignores your elderly neighbor because “It’s not your place to entertain them.” the part of you that doesn’t smile at the grocery cashier, keeps your eyes down at work. That part of normalcy goes away too and you start noticing. You really see the world for what it is, and then you start to do what you can to make it a better place.

 

So long live GISHWHES. I am proud to be counted among so many wonderful people.