Do you ever get the feeling that you're the only one not having a good time?
I miss my apartment.
Socializing takes way too much out of me these days. The older I get, the harder it is. When I had a wingman at a con who enjoyed the social part, it was a lot easier to run around, but doing it all on my own? Incredibly hard. Massive amounts of effort.
There are things that I just am and do. And then there are things that take a hell of a lot of work. It's like pulling teeth.
And the weirdest thing of all?
Walking through the dealer's room and realizing I just had no interest in anything there. Seriously. What's up with that? How can I not desire books like breath anymore? What's happened to me the last year? Why don't I feel like I fit in here anymore? Has Dayton screwed with my head?
Coming here again is like coming here a different person. The Chicago airport, too... it's like visiting it for the first time. Everything is the same, yes, but me looking at it... it's all so different. Everything is just... different.
Something very strange happened this year. It's why I don't blog as much, why I don't write long rants. The thing is, I don't know when it happened. With the not-Boyfriend, maybe? Building a life outside of traveling and rocketing credit card debt and massive self hate. Since September life has been rich and exciting and *enough*... just living it. It's hard *enough.* I didn't need to make it any more complicated. And it was still, amazingly, such a rich life.
Maybe that's the thing. I wasn't traveling anywhere. I wasn't living in a big, exciting city. I had a book contract and a great job and suddenly, for the first time in... in my life? Everything was OK. I was OK with myself. I didn't need to bash myself in. I didn't need to seethe. When I look inward, everything just goes really quiet now.
I don't know what happened. A lot changed.
Or maybe it didn't change so much as it went into hibernation. The seething, angry voice went suddenly quiet.
Just this quiet place. A quiet place after a devastating storm.
And I'm still in that quiet place.
But the me that lives in that quiet place isn't the same one who has a blast at Wiscon.
I think things are just going to be quiet a little while longer.
I want to go home.
UPDATE: Well, it'll cost me over $180 to change the ticket so I can go home tomorrow night instead of Sunday. So I guess I'm staying the second night.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Wiscon
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7 comments so far. What are your thoughts?
Would love to see you tomorrow. I've certainly gone through a lot of those feelings recently -- I have a lot of silly theories, but I promise not to share them unless you actually want to hear them. :)
I think it's really weird that so many of us do this.
It also occurred to me today that a lot of the weirdness of this year's con is that I realized that this is the first time when Wiscon wasn't all about just having fun... Wiscon was... work.
It's finally starting to sink in that I have a big book contract and another one I need to bag and a whole writing career to build.
There was suddenly a lot more pressure around the whole thing, even more than the usual "insecure writer" thing we all bring to the table every year.
and the "insecure writer" thing is fucking plenty. Oy.
And now, I think we should talk about something else. Like donuts.
(And you should e-mail me a .pdf copy of that thing you said you would mail me. The thing that goes with the MLP? Because it's I can't have the MLP without having read it, after all.)
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