The Society for Creative Anachronism supplies my alter-ego.
Create a character who lived somewhere known to western Europe bewteen 600 and 1600 AD. Chose a name, create the wardrobe, create and paricipate in the activities. It gives me things to research, plus activities to get me out of the house and away from a computer. (Computers are NOT period.) So I dress in hand sewn linen clothing and go shoot archery with my hand made (by someone else) longbow and my hand made (by a different someone else) arrows using my hand made (by me) quivver.
I would love to put on armor and fight in battles, but, considering my modern profession, if I break an arm I'm out of a job, so I only watch.
Nest Ffynnon lives near a healing well in extremely rural central Wales. She has a few sheep, and is wise in the use of herbs. She wildcrafts for healing herbs and for food. She barters for what she can't provide herself.
So how does the modern me fit in here? Well, for starters, I don't have sheep, but I can pretend. I have learned to spin wool using a drop spindle, but it is tedious and I'm not likely to ever try to find someone to weave what I've spun, so I pretend that Nest sells the raw wool to someone else who converts it to cloth. I want to learn to make cheese, which would be possibie with sheeps milk. I already know how to sew, so it was simply a matter of researching dress styles for the period. (Think "Monty Python and the Holy Grail.") I can be as rugged or as splendid as I choose. Linen tunic and trousers for daily wear, but a (one, single) lavishly embroidered silk dress for wearing to Court.
There are countless activities I could pursue in period. I do detailed sewing, though I have not taken up embroidery, yet. I do beading on fabric, and without fabric. I am learning basket weaving (from my mother), herbology, brewing, and tentmaking. (Yes, I designed and sewed my tent, but no, I did not sew it by hand.) I would like to learn leather working and wood carving. I might possibly become a Chirurgeon (a doctor in period, but more modernly a first aid person). I shoot archery, and throw knives and axes. I have been know to camp cry ("Oh-Yeay! Oh-Yeay! These are your morning anouncements!") at camping events, and to carry water and pickle juice (for the electrolytes) to fighters in battle. I've kept score at tournaments.
Who else plays in my local shire? A nuclear physicist, a wildlife biologist, a couple of school teachers, a psychologist, a couple of counsellors, a forensic anthropologist, an architect, a lawyer, a romance novelist, a police officer, a long-distance truck driver, some active-duty military personnel, and some stay-at-home moms. That's for starters.