Too Long in the Planetarium

There is a condition that I have run into - it needs a name. It has no name however, but it goes like this .. I created my own stars in my planetarium. Several times in fact. A self contained celestial sphere, I've pointed it this way and that, I've lensed Orion, I've lassoed the Milky Way. I've immersed myself in different ways to project it, to accompany it with legends and music and backgrounds .. I've built skies of varying shapes and sizes. After one long day finishing up my latest planetarium one autumn night not too long ago, as I walked into the house, I glanced up. UP .. UP OUTSIDE .. what a concept What are those things up beyond my yard light I mused .. why, they are stars. The real stars. Had I forgotten them? To be honest, I had forgotten them. Given up on them. Used light pollution as an excuse, or cold, or old age. I had stopped long ago looking up. I had hit a wall in amateur astronomy (more on that later) and retreated inside, where everything was more under control. It hadnt always been this way. Once I avidly read astronomy magazines, networked with people and their telescopes. I never got anything big, always had a spyglass as I called it, but I knew how big the real heavens were. On that night last fall, I remember thinking just for a second - that Big Dippers all wrong - its too big . Then I caught myself. Like the guy in the movie Armageddon I had to remind myself - if you'll pardon the expression - its a bigass sky.Way bigger than I was giving it credit for. In other words, the universe had begun to revolve around ME. And that was wrong. Was I playing God in my own little theater? I hope not, I was hoping to teach and inspire. But I was forgetting my roots. I was forgetting the reason I was projecting stars in the first place. One might put it this way .. its the stars, stoopid. The real ones. So I found a weird little short focus refractor, the way I like to find things. Cheap! And I put in that old 16mm Konig eyepiece from University Optics, and I went out and saw that it was good. It was still good. So Ive been missing half the equation seemingly. A friend had even sent me a slide rule - maybe he was telling me something .. I needed to recalculate my trajectory a bit . Why not?