Good luck scanning!

I might go to FE, i don't know.

It's been more than long enough for me, being out of habit per yearly conventiongoing- conventiongoing at all, the more personal details of which I know I've told you, and I've appreciated deeply your kindness in respecting my privacy, Jenora- that I don't know if I'm ever going back to that particular well of fandom. Back in 2019, I felt like conventions might be coming back into my life, that I could take a decent shot at going to and enjoying them and the company of others of similar fashion in fandom, but the pandemic and what's become an endemic, if I've accurately understood its varied terminology, functioned as a reset button for the progress I'd made.

Furnal Equinox didn't exist- or was very early in its generation- when I was last in attendance at Ad Astra back in July of 2006, and for me everything that happened over that weekend. Most of what's happened in local fandom I've felt has outdistanced me, outdistanced the fastest, longest run I might be able to make to catch up. I used to think that consideration on my part was grieving it, but I feel more like we've outgrown each other now, my going to conventions and the conventions welcoming me in attendance, and now that I've made my peace with that part of what once was I don't know if I'd ever feel comfortable going back.

In a strange way, having a purely online existence as Twopaw and how I've interacted with those few, like you, whom I still know well in our local Fandom, and with Trek and science-fiction fandom as a whole, has been and become an adaptation I'm comfortable with. It's not like it hadn't been that way long before the pandemic hit the fandom back in early 2020, but that I've grown accustomed to it. I still go out to Loblaws twice a week and Shoppers Drug Mart once on the weekend for my groceries every week, and to the bank to pay my bills and withdraw my monthly stipend. I don't feel any less a fan, nor do I feel the cabin fever I expected to be buried in by the time I accepted this as my own new normal.

I've even given thought to going to Bakka Books on Harbord, or even the Spaced-out Library and the Merrill Collection sometime not far down the line. I feel whole, and I don't feel burdened with distance or my less pleasant memories or the events that surround them in that memory; if I miss anything I think it's seeing you in person, Jenora. You're in any practical or absolute sense the one person I really miss meeting at a Vicky Day Meet or Ad Astra, at least whom I've known since those early days on the Trap Line BBS, and in no small way you're my strong, loving anchor to the local Furry fandom I remember and my not being cast wholly adrift from it.

I can only reassure you, and that I hope will be enough, in that I am well, and I have no plans on worsening my habits so that I would become unwell. That, and I have treasured our friendship of the last thirty years, and have not felt it wane, despite not having shared physical space for some time now.

-2Paw.

Furnal Equinox started in 2010 (Condition in London and What The Fur in Montreal started the same year), so it would have been after you stopped going to conventions, yes.

As for not going... that's perfectly fine with me. Everybody gets to set their own boundaries as long as they don't actively try to knock over others' boundaries, and a convention (especially a relatively large one) can be chaotic and hard to keep up with mentally at the best of times. If it's not going to be fun for you because it's overwhelming, then there's not really a good reason to go. It's not like everybody else in the local fandom goes, either.

I mean, I will admit that I go because I get to both meet people I've known before and make new connections, but also at least in part because it's kind of a tradition for me at this point. I've been going to conventions in general since the Victoria International Cartoon Festival in about 1986. I've been doing it enough that I'd have to have a reason to not do it these days. So there's a bit of inertia for both of us, it's just going in different directions.

I used to be part of the Friends of the Merril Collection; I really need to get back to that at some point. The occasional readings and events that they would do were fun. I ended up actually meeting Judith Merril there at one point, and I was there the day that Rick Green came in at one party and donated a full set of tapes from 'Prisoners of Gravity'. It's definitely a much smaller, cozier group.

And I am glad to hear you're still doing well. You do have to take care of yourself first, because you're not going to be much good for anybody else if you don't.

woo FE cant wait