Next Year, In Chicago

WorldCon & the Hugo Awards will be here in Chicago in 2022. Labor Day Weekend, even.

IT'S ALL VERY EXCITING.

Today I began my journey to attendance.

• ChiCon 8 membership acquired.
  (WorldCon is a movable feast. Different location & convention name every year. But I digress.)
• Program interest form submitted.
• clicked on the "interested in vending in the Vendor Room."
• CLICKED ON "interested in volunteering" too!

I did the last two even though I have no idea how I would juggle all 3 of those options. They're all things I WANT to do, so that counts, right? I sure hope so.

It's extra scary because I've been leery of volunteering for anything at cons forever. I don't feel I'm reliable enough to get involved in that way & I am also not good for much help except for things like sorting materials, folding stuff, or staffing a reg desk. Which are rarely what anyone asks me to do.

Why do I feel unreliable? Because I HAVE been. In 2016 I backed out of helping in a con suite at the Nebulas Conference at the very last minute. (Great way to make a bad impression on people in the professional community, huh? Yeah. It still makes me squirm 5 years later. Thanks, brain. )

But Spouseman was just out of cancer surgery & might have needed me home at any point, and I was at the conference hotel away from him for the first time since he'd goten home fromthe hospital, so attending at all was putting me WAY over my coping limit.

I know in my heart backing out was the right thing to do, I barely made it to Sunday before physically & mentally melting down, but that doesn't stop the guilty feeling I was selfish to go at all if I couldn't help.

The one black thread of sad in this is that it means no DragonCon yet again in 2022, but a) it's WorldCon, and b) it's WORLDCON, and c) it's right here in my own backyard. Flying to another city for one convention when such an important one is (for once) local would be absurd.

Sometimes I am absurd, but not like that.

So anyway. I've signed up for Doing Author-Related Things at WorldCon next year & I am exciterrified about it. More as it develops.

Until later!

Oop, almost forgot: obligatory cat pic for internet purposes.