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My MCFC, what happened, and what it means for the future
9 years ago
My body moves, goes where I will. But though I try, my heart stays still.
BEFORE I GET INTO THIS, THIS IS NOT ABOUT ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED TO ANYONE ELSE AT MOTOR CITY FURRY CON, THIS IS PURELY A PERSONAL ACCOUNT.
Gosh it's been ages since I made a journal, hasn't it? Well, it's become necessary to take some time and address a few things, and Twitter is a little too brief to hold the bulk of it. I considered Tumblr, but since this is more an update for the furry crowd than anyone else, I figured it would be more appropriate to leave it here.
Some of you may know that this was my third year being a part of the MCFC staff. My experience this year however was, to be perfectly honest, the first time I've ever come away from a con feeling more negative than positive about it. Let me be perfectly clear: the terrible parts of my weekend had absolutely nothing to do with convention itself or anyone present there. MCFC is always such an amazing atmosphere, there's so many people I love there and I always meet even more, and I adore working with the staff. Even working seven hours of reg a day, outside of the occasional frustration spot here and there, when things were going smoothly I was actually enjoying myself. There were also several other points of the weekend at which I was feeling good and having a good time, so don't think for a second that my entire weekend was awful throughout.
That being said, let try and explain what happened to me at MCFC this year:
For reasons I won't go into, my arrival to the con was -massively- delayed until very very late Thursday night. This left me unable to help reg at all, very tired, and with little buffer time to try and pick the night up a little before inevitably passing the fuck out. I then got up at 8:00am to be at reg by 9, where I worked for seven straight hours without really being relieved or getting a break until about 4pm. After that I actually had to leave the con, because I still had errands to run in preparation for the weekend that I had not had a chance to run due to my delayed departure. This killed another 2 hours driving around Novi. After finally getting showered, changed, freshened up, in relaxation mode, I bopped around the con and sponsor lounge for a little while. When it came around time when I wanted to start having a drink or two, I had a couple sips of some very nice top-shelf tequila, which immediately made me throw up. That ended pretty much any drinking I would attempt for the night until it was basically over. Because I then felt sick, I had to go lay down for a while, so that took away another hour. My night did eventually pick up and hold to a good quality for the rest of the night, but it was nearly done by then.
Friday, woke up at 8:30 to make reg at 10. Still pulled seven hours, actually got a break for an hourish in between when I wanted it though, and overall I was having a good time working that day. After I'd finished working, I got showered, changed, ate, and brought all my glowsticks and lights to the sponsor's lounge to crack them and put them, and also be social while doing so. I was there for maybe an hour and a half, drinking, cracking glowsticks, making new friends, talking about Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3, having a blast. After I was all decked out, I dropped off the stuff I had on me, went to the dance, danced for maybe five minutes before I then had to scramble off to the backstage area to throw up again. The problem then though is that I'd had quite a bit more than half a shot at this point, and even though I had felt totally fine the entire time I'd been drinking in the sponsor's lounge, simply laying down for a while didn't clear it up. I was very, very ill for the rest of the night. The very sudden decline also had me worried quite a bit, and I was at least fairly intoxicated, so I started to really freak out. I made the decision then that I just couldn't be there anymore, that I had to leave. After a very rocky trip back to my room, punctuated by several points at which I had to stop and find a chair and try and hold what little was left in my stomach in, I slept off the remainder of the alcohol in my system. As soon as I was sober, I hastily threw my stuff in my car (leaving several things that were in other parts of the convention center in the process), and made the five-or-so-hour drive back to Chicago.
Oh, have I mentioned I'm in the middle of moving to Chicago right now? I guess that's kind of important. I'll have officially relocated as of the end of this month.
The trip to Chicago was further out, but I felt better returning to an apartment with friendly faces rather than one that is empty and half-packed.
TL;DR: I got very rapidly sick both Friday and Saturday nights and decided it was necessary for my health and well-being to cut the whole weekend short and return home.
On the way home, I took a lot of time to reflect on why the weekend had been so terrible, on what exactly it was that had happened in relation to other things going on in my life, and why all those terrible things overrode all the good parts of the experience. Basically what it comes down to is that for the last seven years or so, conventions (furry ones in particular) have become prominent fixtures in life. They've been my only vacations since I was seventeen, they tend to provide a lot of reprieve from the things going on in my day-to-day, and they just reliably tend to be some of the most fun experiences I have. They act as gathering points for good friends I don't get to see very often, and provide unique experiences you just can't get anywhere else. I love conventions so much that I wanted to get involved in making them fun for other people, and I have fun doing that too. Bring all that up to now, having had a very very stressful last few months, a good convention weekend was something I really needed.
But here's the problem: over the last two years or so, I've been dealing with increasingly worse and worse health issues that have made the convention process very taxing on me. In the last year and a half, of four cons I attended (not counting this weekend), two of them have seen me in the hospital the following Monday. It's now reached the point where it doesn't seem like I can even make it through a whole weekend. Of course, the natural solution seems to be try and take things easier (if you know me at all, you know I tend to party pretty damn hard at these things) and slow down a little bit. I mean, I've tried doing that, still could definitely take it down a few more notches, but at that point I'm not really having fun anymore. I've gotten such a good handle on what makes cons fun for me, that doing anything but that leaves me frustrated and unfulfilled. Of course, there's also the issue that all the traveling I've been doing over the last year or so outside of just conventions has really started to take it's toll on me, and the more I find myself driving around the midwest and beyond more frequently, the harder those trips are on me each time. So this brings me to the other solution:
I could stop going to cons.
I really really don't want to.
But I might have to.
The more I think about it, the more that it seems like for the sake of my health, I just cannot continue to push myself well out of town for weekends of activities I just can't seem to handle anymore. It sucks, but that genuinely appears to be the reality of the situation. For my own well-being, I may just need to take sabbatical from conventions and traveling in general while I give myself some time to take it easy and keep trying to recover my health. Maybe after a year of taking things as easy as possible, I'll feel up to returning to a convention and will finally be able to enjoy them like I used to again, but as it is right now, I just don't think I can do conventions like I used to, and in light of that it may be better not to do them at all.
This is honestly a really hard thing to consider. A year without a single convention at all is one of the most upsetting prospects to enter my future in a while (and that's saying something), but I may just have to.
Nothing is decided yet, I'm still talking to a few people and trying to come to a more solid decision. If I end up deciding to take time off, I will probably still try to make it to Anthrocon this year as it is very important to me to see a few folks I know will be there. I will also likely still be present at MFF this year because I'll be living in Chicago, so the travel is less of an issue, and I've agreed to staff it this time around. What it will probably amount to is that I just won't add any more cons to my schedule at all for the rest of year, and then not do any in 2017.
Of course, one of the hardest things about this decision is it would mean that I would have to leave the Motor City staff, which is something I very very much do not want to do. MCFC means a lot to me, getting to be a part of putting it on has been an incredibly special experience, and having to step away from that would be difficult.
Anyway, I'm kind of rambling and talking in circles at this point. Like I said, no decisions made just yet, but these are the prospects I'm currently looking at. The fact that I'm only 24 and yet health concerns are facilitating such massive shifts in my lifestyle is really upsetting, and it's not put me in a great place, but it is what it is.
Gosh it's been ages since I made a journal, hasn't it? Well, it's become necessary to take some time and address a few things, and Twitter is a little too brief to hold the bulk of it. I considered Tumblr, but since this is more an update for the furry crowd than anyone else, I figured it would be more appropriate to leave it here.
Some of you may know that this was my third year being a part of the MCFC staff. My experience this year however was, to be perfectly honest, the first time I've ever come away from a con feeling more negative than positive about it. Let me be perfectly clear: the terrible parts of my weekend had absolutely nothing to do with convention itself or anyone present there. MCFC is always such an amazing atmosphere, there's so many people I love there and I always meet even more, and I adore working with the staff. Even working seven hours of reg a day, outside of the occasional frustration spot here and there, when things were going smoothly I was actually enjoying myself. There were also several other points of the weekend at which I was feeling good and having a good time, so don't think for a second that my entire weekend was awful throughout.
That being said, let try and explain what happened to me at MCFC this year:
For reasons I won't go into, my arrival to the con was -massively- delayed until very very late Thursday night. This left me unable to help reg at all, very tired, and with little buffer time to try and pick the night up a little before inevitably passing the fuck out. I then got up at 8:00am to be at reg by 9, where I worked for seven straight hours without really being relieved or getting a break until about 4pm. After that I actually had to leave the con, because I still had errands to run in preparation for the weekend that I had not had a chance to run due to my delayed departure. This killed another 2 hours driving around Novi. After finally getting showered, changed, freshened up, in relaxation mode, I bopped around the con and sponsor lounge for a little while. When it came around time when I wanted to start having a drink or two, I had a couple sips of some very nice top-shelf tequila, which immediately made me throw up. That ended pretty much any drinking I would attempt for the night until it was basically over. Because I then felt sick, I had to go lay down for a while, so that took away another hour. My night did eventually pick up and hold to a good quality for the rest of the night, but it was nearly done by then.
Friday, woke up at 8:30 to make reg at 10. Still pulled seven hours, actually got a break for an hourish in between when I wanted it though, and overall I was having a good time working that day. After I'd finished working, I got showered, changed, ate, and brought all my glowsticks and lights to the sponsor's lounge to crack them and put them, and also be social while doing so. I was there for maybe an hour and a half, drinking, cracking glowsticks, making new friends, talking about Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3, having a blast. After I was all decked out, I dropped off the stuff I had on me, went to the dance, danced for maybe five minutes before I then had to scramble off to the backstage area to throw up again. The problem then though is that I'd had quite a bit more than half a shot at this point, and even though I had felt totally fine the entire time I'd been drinking in the sponsor's lounge, simply laying down for a while didn't clear it up. I was very, very ill for the rest of the night. The very sudden decline also had me worried quite a bit, and I was at least fairly intoxicated, so I started to really freak out. I made the decision then that I just couldn't be there anymore, that I had to leave. After a very rocky trip back to my room, punctuated by several points at which I had to stop and find a chair and try and hold what little was left in my stomach in, I slept off the remainder of the alcohol in my system. As soon as I was sober, I hastily threw my stuff in my car (leaving several things that were in other parts of the convention center in the process), and made the five-or-so-hour drive back to Chicago.
Oh, have I mentioned I'm in the middle of moving to Chicago right now? I guess that's kind of important. I'll have officially relocated as of the end of this month.
The trip to Chicago was further out, but I felt better returning to an apartment with friendly faces rather than one that is empty and half-packed.
TL;DR: I got very rapidly sick both Friday and Saturday nights and decided it was necessary for my health and well-being to cut the whole weekend short and return home.
On the way home, I took a lot of time to reflect on why the weekend had been so terrible, on what exactly it was that had happened in relation to other things going on in my life, and why all those terrible things overrode all the good parts of the experience. Basically what it comes down to is that for the last seven years or so, conventions (furry ones in particular) have become prominent fixtures in life. They've been my only vacations since I was seventeen, they tend to provide a lot of reprieve from the things going on in my day-to-day, and they just reliably tend to be some of the most fun experiences I have. They act as gathering points for good friends I don't get to see very often, and provide unique experiences you just can't get anywhere else. I love conventions so much that I wanted to get involved in making them fun for other people, and I have fun doing that too. Bring all that up to now, having had a very very stressful last few months, a good convention weekend was something I really needed.
But here's the problem: over the last two years or so, I've been dealing with increasingly worse and worse health issues that have made the convention process very taxing on me. In the last year and a half, of four cons I attended (not counting this weekend), two of them have seen me in the hospital the following Monday. It's now reached the point where it doesn't seem like I can even make it through a whole weekend. Of course, the natural solution seems to be try and take things easier (if you know me at all, you know I tend to party pretty damn hard at these things) and slow down a little bit. I mean, I've tried doing that, still could definitely take it down a few more notches, but at that point I'm not really having fun anymore. I've gotten such a good handle on what makes cons fun for me, that doing anything but that leaves me frustrated and unfulfilled. Of course, there's also the issue that all the traveling I've been doing over the last year or so outside of just conventions has really started to take it's toll on me, and the more I find myself driving around the midwest and beyond more frequently, the harder those trips are on me each time. So this brings me to the other solution:
I could stop going to cons.
I really really don't want to.
But I might have to.
The more I think about it, the more that it seems like for the sake of my health, I just cannot continue to push myself well out of town for weekends of activities I just can't seem to handle anymore. It sucks, but that genuinely appears to be the reality of the situation. For my own well-being, I may just need to take sabbatical from conventions and traveling in general while I give myself some time to take it easy and keep trying to recover my health. Maybe after a year of taking things as easy as possible, I'll feel up to returning to a convention and will finally be able to enjoy them like I used to again, but as it is right now, I just don't think I can do conventions like I used to, and in light of that it may be better not to do them at all.
This is honestly a really hard thing to consider. A year without a single convention at all is one of the most upsetting prospects to enter my future in a while (and that's saying something), but I may just have to.
Nothing is decided yet, I'm still talking to a few people and trying to come to a more solid decision. If I end up deciding to take time off, I will probably still try to make it to Anthrocon this year as it is very important to me to see a few folks I know will be there. I will also likely still be present at MFF this year because I'll be living in Chicago, so the travel is less of an issue, and I've agreed to staff it this time around. What it will probably amount to is that I just won't add any more cons to my schedule at all for the rest of year, and then not do any in 2017.
Of course, one of the hardest things about this decision is it would mean that I would have to leave the Motor City staff, which is something I very very much do not want to do. MCFC means a lot to me, getting to be a part of putting it on has been an incredibly special experience, and having to step away from that would be difficult.
Anyway, I'm kind of rambling and talking in circles at this point. Like I said, no decisions made just yet, but these are the prospects I'm currently looking at. The fact that I'm only 24 and yet health concerns are facilitating such massive shifts in my lifestyle is really upsetting, and it's not put me in a great place, but it is what it is.
If you wanna keep at cons, just limit it down to one or two. Maybe cut back on the drinkin'. Yeah I now it doesn't sound grand(They are big parts of cons after all :P), but considering you had two incidents following consuming alcohol... might be your best option!
Keep on keepin' on, Broski