I had a good time at Baycon this year.

I wasn’t looking forward to it for many reasons but it felt important to go. I arrived around midnight on Friday. Walking into the hotel didn’t feel good and I was thinking I didn’t want to leave the room once I was there. I got to sleep by telling myself that I could leave at any time and I didn’t have to force myself to stay. There were a lot of negative memories in association with the hotel space and with some of the staff of the con. Also, I didn’t know how well I would do not working the con, how hard would it be to go back to being just a member and being on the outside. To add spice, I have been so non-social lately, I didn’t know how I would deal with so many people and with past friends that I haven’t seen in eons.

I am not really sure what happened but Sat went pretty well and I was having a nice time. Then it was time for the masquerade. There is a lot of detail I am skipping over (which is unlike me) but I got to do Line and then help direct the contestants. I was useful and I did something I love to do. Afterwards, I continued to sit where I was in the hallway as people went past. Friends and strangers would stop and talk to me. For hours. This is something that hasn’t happened for years. I got to hold court. People wanted to talk with me and came to me. I sat there from we think 8:30 pm to 2 am. Then I went to the party floor. I don’t normally like the parties. I am very uncomfortable but some of my best con experiences come out of time on the party floor so I at least try to put up with the discomfort and uneasy. Circumstances led to me sitting in one room for awhile (it is hard for this to happen) and I got to experience a hard science discussion that when above my head part of the time and was fun. I can’t remember the last time I ran into that but I do remember it from the very early days of my convention attending life. Sunday felt even better. Again I ended up talking for hours. It wasn’t as much fun but it felt good to be able to do it and I felt smart. I made it to the party floor when most of the parties where over so I didn’t have to say long and I am a little sad I didn’t get a chance to talk to some people. There was a nice interlude afterwards that will extend outside of con. Monday I was planning on heading home and saying goodbye to those I caught on my way out. Turns out I caught a lot of people and managed to get some conversations done that I wanted to get to during the con. Over the entire con, I got a lot of miscommunications cleared up that had been bothering me for a long time and that felt good. I managed to get over my uncomfort with staff and was just a regular member again.

There was a lot that I missed and usually I feel like I have lost out. I was mostly ok with it this year. I enjoyed what I had. I need to remember how to do this.

I talked to a lot of people and that went really well. I passed information on and made connections for more information. I have had trouble with my connecting the dots. I have lots of contacts and info and things haven’t been working out when I try to match ones that fit really well. I have decided to not try any more. But the connections I made this weekend all have to do with info I already have and are not depended on anyone or anything else. That feels good. I have 5 emails to send out because of these connections.

I am impressed with how well the con came together. I liked a lot of the changes I saw. I hope they become part of future cons. I am excited about upcoming Loscons and have no qualms about my dedication to that con. I was debating if I would be attending Baycon next year thinking that maybe I needed a break but I think things went so well it shouldn’t be an issue. I hope I can keep this approach to cons. This is near where I started when I began attending cons.

Now I am in kind of a limbo state. I am back in the real world and the non-social habit after a very social weekend. I had been getting a little more social over the last few weeks and it looks like my job has suffered. I am concerned about how a heavy social weekend will affect things at work. I took today off because I didn’t have the recovery time on Monday I thought I would have and have slept through most of the day. I wish I had a better con to reality reentry process in place.