Well, given that I'm at the airport to fly out for BLFC this evening, I should probably get this thing up!

It's such a strange, self-sabotage that happened here. When cons actually go well, the tale of working them becomes a lot less interesting. I find myself at that imposition right now, having recently completed a very successful Furthemore. Ah well, I’ve had such doubts before and turned up pretty good journals, so we’ll see. Other aspects of my life are smoking wrecks right now so maybe that’ll balance it out or whatever.

I actually didn't think I'd get to go to this convention thanks to recently starting a job. I didn't think I'd be able to swing all the time off so soon, especially with extra for the drive and to help with setup and loadout. However, the operator of the power plant that hired me filed for bankruptcy a few weeks ago, so that's changed the landscape a bit. It's not a certainty that the whole thing will go down in flames, but in many ways that uncertainty is worse, as it apparently plans to persist for some time. In any case, that particular turd in the punchbowl made me feel a lot more comfortable betting against the company. Specifically in the form of blowing all my vacation days because those are forfeit when you get laid off anyways. That's how I ended up suddenly having both Furthemore and BLFC plans appearing just recently. Hey, even if I lose this bet it means that I'm keeping this job that I really want. One of the most tarnished silver linings I've ever seen but I'll take what I can get I suppose. Anyways, I can whine about that later. At this point I could go on for days about that, so for the moment I'd best make sure that I actually mention the convention in this alleged convention journal.

One of the first things I did when communicating with the other staff when this latent revelation came to light was procure for myself an actual, specific role in the structure there. I mentioned last year how they'd nearly streamlined my wander-around-and-do-whatever sort of position out of existence, so I knew I'd have to commit to something if I wanted to have a good chance of actually moving the needle this time. I got along well with Azure Wolf, who thankfully is no longer literally the only person in logistics department, and I had a good time working with all the operations people where logistics is based out of. Given that a huge chunk of the work that I seemed to end up doing was tracking and movement of supplies and materials, logistics seemed a good fit. It was good this year in particular because a big chunk of that work is during setup and loadout at the beginning and end of the con, and I had plenty of time to spare this year for those parts. So I became part of logistics. Our organizational structure is well used to shakeups, so making that declaration in the eleventh hour wasn't such a big deal. There always seem to be a few last-minute substitutions because life is like that. This year there were a fair few more than normal. When we were passing out accolades at the end, many of the descriptions were "Yeah, this guy only found out they would be doing this job like 'n' days before the con started and they still managed to pull it off." Where 'n' was an integer value that varied between three and zero. So the con going pretty smoothly even with a bunch of people having only just stepped up to the plate is quite an achievement.

Anyways, my official induction into the Ops sphere of influence (an interaction consisting of a couple quick Telegram conversations, the most official kind of induction) landed me in the pre-con ops dinner on Wednesday night. Not really a formal dinner or anything, just Mexican food in one of our hotel rooms, so I just texted in a bunch of Spanish words to the person who was ordering and hoped for the best when I got there. That wedged in fairly nicely after the seven-hour drive to get to the place (it snowed most of the way there because I have clearly angered Shiva again, there's just no reasoning with her sometimes). The drive is another big reason why I was thinking I wouldn't manage it this time. A trip of that length basically adds a day at either end at the very least. Could get even worse depending on sleep deprivation conditions at the far end. The first Furthemore burst onto the scene at something of a tumultuous period for me, and as such I've moved further away from it every year since I started working there. In fact the one time that I didn't move, they moved away from me. Hopefully that trend won't continue too much further. I'll end up working at a metal foundry in Singapore and spend more time traveling to the con than working at it.

Pre-con ops tacos (which is an anagram of both "coon spaceports" and "porno scope acts" just in case you have any spare brain cells that desperately need a profoundly useless piece of information to hang onto) had an attendance of Kiba, our stalwart bannerman; Tyecoon, our much smaller but no-less-durable secondary bannerman and publications wizard; Azure, logistics team leader now that the word "team" in that phrase doesn't mandate derisive air quotes around it; Adept Omega, who has done enough things that I forget which one it was this time, charity and volunteer management I think; Fox E Wolf, IT code monkey and my roommate for this adventure; Yuukari, proud gofur rancher; Red, who I also forgot what he does but he must be good about it because I only tend to hear about problems; and Sparf and Hawthorn, two of the illustrious surprise promotion people. Hawthorne was taking on a security role pretty early on in his tenure here, so he's far braver than I. Newly-vice-chair Sparf's temperament was kind of like the dad's reaction in those youtube videos where their girlfriend tells him that they're pregnant. It's like outwardly "Oh that's wonderful!" but in absolutely everything other than the literal words they are using you can just feel their sinking realization of the massive amount of responsibility that is about to crush them into a stringy paste. There's a lot of that going around right before the con. So you know, good time had by all.

Really though, this kind of thing came up in response to the way that we tend to work with people closely at the con, but never really interact meaningfully because of how busy and tired we are, and how most of us go the rest of the intervening year without crossing paths again. So we took a moment while we all still had time and useful consciousness before the con started to just kind of hang out and chat. That was pretty nice, actually. It's a great group and doing the whole "ships passing in the night" bit with them every time really had us missing out. Naturally it wouldn't be an ops meeting without some kind of profound miscommunication or other. Don't worry, it's not like teamwork and coordinating things are our job or something. Would be really embarrassing otherwise. What we'd failed to get across to a big chunk of the audience was that we were planning on going to the pool that evening, but of course nobody brought swimsuits because we didn't scrutinize our invites past the part where they said there would be tacos. We re-scheduled it to the following night and then to the 7th of Nevuary as con setup handily precluded that. So yeah, it's at least an accurate way of setting the stage for what's to come, as conventions are nothing if not a string of things that didn't work out how you thought but nobody ever lets that stop them.

I've no gift for summary as I'm sure you all need no reminder, but a sizable majority of Thursday can be covered by just the description of "get the stuff to the place" with only the stuff and place changing periodically. I often lament my lack of transferable skills when I come to work here, as I've only ever worked one other real job, which was in a field that doesn't have a lot of overlap with putting on a weekend party for animal people, but I'll be damned if all my pallet-jack-driving experience from the navy doesn't really come into its own during these things. Moving through a spacious hotel lobby is comparatively easy compared with trying to get a heavy pump motor across a long expanse of industrial non-skid with planes and equipment lying around all over the place.

The professional movers team picked up a few new recruits that were quite familiar to me, Elbi the Island Bori Neopet (they should really call them Retropets at this point but they're still cute) and her betrothed Butterscotch Bunny. Only the former was officially staffing, but Scotchbun still unofficially moved many heavy things to the places they were needed, so I try not to get hung up on semantics. Lots of people work for us without "working for us", though I have observed that to be a fairly unstable quantum state. About halfway through the con I was just thinking "Oh damn Scotch is working way too hard they're gonna kidnap his ass" and indeed he's been officialized as of closing ceremonies. That's how they get ya. At least they don't use the big butterfly net like back in the old days.

The three of us ended up stuffing swag-bags afterwords, which is rather like if you combined an assembly line with an effort to break some kind of hyper-specific Guinness World Record for juggling hundreds of irregularly shaped fragile objects with a corgi running around between all of your ankles and then crammed all that whole production into an occupied hotel room. The corgi doesn't really have a metaphorical meaning in that description. Chassie was just actually there being a corgi during that process and she was keen on letting us know that she's quite bored with our silly human shenanigans. I was out of objective markers on my minimap by the time we were done with all the bags and I'd gotten them into a fairly organized pile that no longer obstructed the fire exit, so I got to have a few silly corgi shenanigans, as one does when invited to do so. Naturally this was the staff services room, so little sundry tasks seemed to find me just by virtue of shear proximity and timing, which works fine by me. Normally I'm having to chase them. Still, I wore down by the end of the night and things appeared to have gone almost eerily smoothly in the process of unpacking everything. Weird how there's something of a streamlining effect to using seven people instead of like 2.5 the way we have other years.

Friday was a fairly simple day. I know quite a few people who would rather passionately disagree with me about that, but the bulk of those things were the type of work that more hands couldn't accelerate, so that was off my plate. There was the standard suite of startup oh-by-the-ways to chase down, but it felt like a good start. I talked with a few of the people in con row as I helped them get situated. Tyr Perhaps and Dragoneer were there advertising for Fursonacon and FA:U respectively, so that was a good chance to catch up with those guys. And of course we got to talk shop, since we were all up to a similar kind of thing at the time. Reaching across the aisle a bit really gives you a sense of scale for how much cross-talk there is between people who staff these things. Everybody knows everybody. I don't think of myself as too deep in the scene, but I knew everybody that was at con row that morning. Maybe that's how it starts? Only time will tell what kind of regret my future self will look back on this with.

Future adventures led me to my old college friend Nunavut and his crew. One among their number was Sturmovik, who apparently had quite a keen interest in nuclear power. So of course we went back and forth about that subject for quite some time. Heh, I came here to NOT think about work, but going over the technical stuff and interesting trivia is still kind of nice, especially with someone who's really enthusiastic about it. Sometimes you need that reminder about why you got into a particular thing. I saw the Radfox brigade a few times, but didn't get a chance to talk shop there because they often move and scatter like neutrons when they're at a busy con.

The big mission that night was picking up a print order that had just gotten filled. Quite a singular experience, truly. Strolling into Staples late at night wearing my Utilikilt and all my con badges, going up to the counter to ask "Hey I'm here to pick up a bunch of 24x36 posters of like a purple dragon telling people to remember to shower and stuff." Yup, that's just a thing I did. It's a part of my life now. That paradoxical normalization was quite proficiently demonstrated by the guy at the counter, whom to my nonsensical request responded "Oh yeah, those are right here." Naturally I made the small but critical mistake of driving out of there at a spot without an intersection. Thanks to the median, that meant pulling out in the wrong direction and on that road you practically get to Alexandria before they'll let you turn around. Though on that loop I did go by a bank to see chasing strobe lights tearing all across the windows of its front facade. It was actually quite refreshing to see a fire alarm the first night of the con that wasn't US. Things that aren't your problem are great! Although I suppose I couldn't say with certainty that's what was going on. There's a chance that they were actually just throwing a sick rave in there. Maybe PNC Bank is a lot cooler than I thought they were.

I got the posters delivered and then un-delivered them because it had just became my job to hang them up. While I was putting one on the wall a little Dutch Angel Dragon walked by and peeped "Not so high some of us are small!" I can work with that. That's actionable feedback! The most frustrating thing to hear from attendees is vague stoner language like "Ah, the vibe just really seems to be low this year." It takes a fair amount of willpower to just smile and thank them for letting me know whilst credibly pretending that any of the words they said mean anything. Anyways, after equipping a few walls with suitably pygmy-accessible PSA posters, my night was my own. That's another one of those paradoxical moments. I was out of stuff to take care of. A strange feeling because that meant that things were going well and nobody needed help right then, which is good, but it also meant that I couldn't do the thing that I was nominally there to do, which at the time was just to serve as just a general fixer/runner kind of thing. Ah well, I accepted it as the good omen that it was and just tanked up on sleep that night. I figured that I would be needing it.

Naturally I paid for my hubris in thinking I didn't have to set an alarm just because I got to bed at a semi-normal time that first night. I got around the next day too late to be in the fursuit parade. Disappointing start, but I still got to watch a good chunk of it. Dance comp was next. Had a lot of good showings there. I had no idea Elbi was planning to throw down there, she is just full of surprises! She had a lot of variety in her tracks, and played to that well. I saw that with quite a few people this time. Lots of people mixing together a wide variety of short clips and then really working the transitions. I guess that's a great way of capitalizing on a shorter segment. Whatever the theory is there, it was great fun to watch.

Throughout all of this, my epic phone saga waged on. It felt like my phone was having a more interesting con than I was, honestly. Recently I was thinking of finally really joining the present and getting a smartphone. It's getting egregious at this point. I'm starting to feel like not having a smartphone is becoming like a counter-culture statement at this point, it really stands out! A few weeks ago 58 year old woman saw my flip phone and said "Oh please tell me they issued you that at work or something. There's no way that's your actual phone!" It kinda stings to get laughed at for being behind the times by someone twice your age. So stepping my tech all the way up to... well not really today but like 2012ish seemed like a reasonable course of action now that I've got a dependable revenue stream. Then of course my revenue stream un-dependabled itself, prompting me to stick with the recycled one that I got for free awhile back. The screen is cracked and the data uplink doesn't work, but really I only needed it to get to Telegram and Twitter during furry conventions, so it worked great for me actually. Well it worked great in the past. This time it had quite an adventure that I really can only do justice to by listing the whole thing off.

That first night I had it connected to the hotel wifi the whole time, so it started a firmware update in the middle of the night. I know this because the bright blue updating screen woke me up at like 2:30AM. Problem was, it seemed to jam up while doing that because it was still updating that morning. I was at a shortage of ideas for what to do because I'm new to the whole smartphone business. I asked around a bit, but of course everybody was too busy with their own things to fiddle with my old klunker right then. Fortunately my phone was working on a plan of its own. The update screen made the backlight stay on constantly, which made short work of the battery and forced it to shut down. So it hit the big red button and did all the doomsday panic protocols that it needed to terminate the update install. Naturally the panic button (or should I say "Kernel Panic Button"? No. No I really shouldn't say that.) nuclear option fricasseed the operating system so it started factory resetting as soon as I plugged the phone in again. I lost everything on there and had to reconnect to the wifi, re-update all my software and reinstall telegram, but we got there. It was working again! I'd had it going for a solid hour or two before I got drunk, lost it, went to bed, tore the place apart to find it again the next day, and then by the time I got it back the battery had died again. So when I got it back to the room I plugged it in again, prompting it to... re-sync to the wifi and start trying that firmware update again. Man, I can't believe I was missing out on ALL THIS by not having one of these devices for so many years. What was I thinking?

Anyways, there were a bunch more meetups to be had on Saturday. We did operations department family dinner with everybody together eating Thai food. I know that team-building sort of things have a really bad rap, but these things are actually really fun when composed of furries. Honestly adding furries to most things makes them more fun! Teambuilding really works like this. We're all there because we want to be, so getting along with people should be something good that we all genuinely want. I'd definitely be up for more of that "let's not talk about the con for just a minute" kind of interaction in the future. I'll mention that the event was Kiba and Trashpanda's great idea since I know that the former of the two will be Ctrl+F-ing her name on this later. (Hi Kiba!)

Speaking of socializing, I got to have a chat with Ambient Dreamer at lunch that day. It's been awhile since I've seen him and it was a real treat that he was staffing as well. I saw Raltz Klamar who somehow gained a positive impression of me from Furry Con. We caught up for awhile and had a quick drink together. He's still mostly a tabletop guy, so it was a shame that I never really got to that room to hang out with him a little more. I also found Zantal in the lobby. Or rather he found me since he was wearing a new disguise that I wasn't familiar with so I wouldn't have picked him out of the crowd. Zan's new otter suit attracted the attention of fellow-otter Summercat, whom I also did some catching up with. I really wish that like, any of my plans with any of those three people had worked out how I thought they would, but such is the nature of life. I did make it down to the sexy late night writing panel though, per tradition. So I got to see Summercat there. I think it might've been an all-otter panel actually. I know that Significant Otter (which is WAY to common of a pun for me to find a link anytime in the next couple decades) was there, and Friday Donnely is also on the circuit. Dunno what the sex panel being all one species says about otters necessarily. Well, nothing that most folk don't already know. ^_^

Last that night was Boozy Badger's panel, which was quite a treat. It's pretty reliably entertaining to hear his take on things, especially given that this is his one year anniversary with the fandom. Crazy how fast all that happened. Now he's been to several cons, he's got multiple panels at each, he's up on stage drinking scotch and talking to a goat puppet, and all his kids have fursonas now. I love how that's a thing that can happen this easily. So many shared-interest fandoms are very insular, and even hostile towards potential new members. With lots of other fandoms you've always gotta go through the hipster challenge to make sure you've done your homework and that you're a "real fan". Nobody gets into the Marvel comic fandom without passing Otis Backbeard's Grueling Trivia Challenge of Pwning the Casuals. Whereas there are plenty of people at furry events that don't even self-identify as one of us but we're still happy to have them. Granted, some of those oh-I'm-definitely-not-a-furry people have staffed a furry con for several years and have multiple artworks of their fursona and are named TrashPandaTye, but we love them all the same.

Sunday you could definitely feel that the con was winding down, in terms of attendee activity anyways. On our end this is where things start to ramp up. With the almighty struggle of loadout on the horizon, I found that I faced some logistical challenges of my own. Fox E's reservation ended that day, so I had to clear out. I had a spot with Milt that night, but his room was quite crowded. I remembered how last Furthemore I never managed to fursuit, and it killed me to see that happening again, but even after throwing a substantial portion of the morning at making that work I couldn't come up with a way to pull it off. Turns out giant fluffy animal costumes are pretty impractical. Who would've guessed? By the time I'd loaded up my suit into my car, loadout was gearing up anyways. We got a pretty early start on it, getting together all of the "Well crap we really didn't need this stuff" category that we always seem to end up with. I was struck again by the novelty of actually having manpower to bring to bear on the thing, and we got that cleared out without much of a struggle.

I was on a Wal-Mart run in the course of that with my staff shirt on. Someone asked me where to find something. Figured it would be quicker to just tell them rather than explain the situation. Someone else heard me answering a question so they came up to ask me something also. I started to think of how awkward it would be to tell everybody I couldn't come back because I'd been accidentally hired by Wal Mart in the interim. Oh well, at least I know that I'm pretty marketable in the case that this reactor plant goes south.

After that it was closing ceremonies, which of course unlocked the next tier of heavy things to move. Fortunately for you, dear reader, that process is one thing that I display pretty consistent skill at fast-forwarding past. Staff dinner came after that, or rather during that I suppose. Right at the end of Sunday is a decent time for most people, but it's right in the middle of most of Logistics department's heavy lifting, so to speak. A little disruptive, but I still ducked out for it. It sounded like it would be a good time and I hadn't eaten an actual meal yet that day. It was a good time. More staff teambuilding stuff and a whole bunch of really good food. We booked up like a third of the restaurant so we got to have a good amount of leeway for the event. I got to talk to the guys from our charity quite a bit because they were seated right across from me. Theirs is another really fun "got swept up by the furries a few years ago and there's no turning back now" kind of story. In the best possible way of course.

Anyways, being a fair bit heavier myself by then, it was time to get back to my fellow heavy things. By then we'd pulled the truck up to the loading dock so you know shit was for real. So a bunch more of the usual things. "Put that here, put that there, oh fuck why do we even still own this stupid thing?" et al. Speaking of that last category, you'll never guess what we ended up with at the end of the night. Two giant-ass CRT TVs that we didn't need and had to find a way to get rid of. And by we, I mean literally anyone else because FUUUUCK that noise. Fuck those giant poison cubes with all the untold legions fetid zombie dicks of every man to die on this planet in all recorded history. I ain't lettin' them put that evil on me again. I fucking disappeared from that loading dock leaving a me-shaped cloud of smoke in my place and didn't even bother finding out what ended up happening in my absence. I took that bullet once last year and I'm not about to jump on any more lead for these cursed appliances. May they burn in hell no matter what happened to them out there.

It was just as well. We were mostly done with what we could do that night by then anyways. There was still a big pile of things, but gaming was its own truck now and that truck didn't arrive until the following morning. So, miracle of miracles, we were done for the day, while it was still today. I don't wanna lean too hard on the "back in my day" and "you millennials have it so easy" sort of rhetoric, but part of the reason why I scheduled my departure like I did was that usually loadout persists until everybody passes out at like 3 or 4 in the morning and then eats a big chunk of the following day as well. Hearing "No actually we're pretty much done for now" after just a couple hours of work was the kind of moment that made me worry that I was in some kind of ill-programmed simulation. Then our totally-not-a-furry raccoon friendo told me to go raid the lounge for mixers because we were about to get so turnt you could use us to drive a generator. That made me sure it was reality.

So yeah. We all cast off our responsibilities and had some fun while tired staffers wandered in to get drunk throughout the night. It's a great way to spend that extra time. There's such a quiet satisfaction to savoring one's victory in like fashion. It was kind of a fun game when lingerers would wander in still needing questions answered. There was always a bit of a quiet scramble because so many of us were drunk and or moving about and unavailable that the answer to "who's in charge?" fluctuated on a minute-to-minute basis. I remember that Koss Kelir got into such a cute huff when I just aimed Fox E at him when he came in. It wasn't any kind of personal jab, I promise. I just knew that those two knew each other so that was the most efficient way to handle this latest priority interrupt request whilst all our brains were busy performing emergency landings. It was pretty nice having CJ Fox stop by though. He had a place of honor as one of the last fursuiters standing in the wee hours of the morning. He was energetically friendly, squishably soft and smelled like a fresh mountain rain. So pretty much everything I'd ask of a fursuiter!

I ended up bailing on Milt in the eleventh hour (metaphorically, it was actually much later than that) because Bryus Biyzko (who seems to have some kind of magic rune in his name that did an SQL injection on my brain to make it impossible for me to remember it) offered me an actual bed to use, which sounded far superior to flopping on the floor for a bit with like five other guys in there. I felt kind of bad because later I found out that Milt had other people bail on him, ones that in fact actually did sleep there and then didn't pay for the opportunity. That's pretty lame. Then again, trying to coordinate a mechanism made of furries is always a gamble, as anybody who staffs a con well knows. Azure claimed that we'd be working on the gaming loadout at 9AM Monday. Apparently 3AM drunk Azure has a lot more impetus than 3AM drunk Beau because the former was totally ON that shit before the latter even managed to get up and clear out of the room. There were just little wrap-up things left by the time I made myself useful. We were all out of there early in the afternoon. I could've crammed my drive back in there that day if I wanted. Just as well that I didn't, but I can't stress enough to you what a dramatic improvement that was over previous years. It was a dramatic, nearly PCD-inducing strike of "Oh we're actually done already." Damn, at this rate I might even dare to hope that next year might also go smoothly and make... optimistic plans? Wow that felt weird to say. Did the pod people get to ME too?

---

Well that's about it for the con postgame recap. Careful observers will note that this time around my schedule contained a whole lot of not much, and several instances of oversleeping and other varied ways of missing out on things. There's a reason for that, several in fact. I'm resolved to talk about those, really more for my health than the edification of anybody else. That's why I've segregated out this part so that people who just want to hear about the con and live vicariously through my grand adventures without having to slog through my baggage. So if you wanted just the first part then congratulations, you've done the thing! If for some reason you're on board with slogging through my baggage, that's all below. This will be a lot more messy stream-of-conscious style information-dump than a cohesive narrative. It's just things that need to be said. Ordinarily I'd say "enjoy!" or something, but it would feel really weird if you enjoyed hearing about all the stuff that's been bothering me so much this whole time. So yeah, that stuff is coming up next. Experience it, or don't. You know, however you do.

I mentioned up top that I'm looking at losing the job that I just got a couple months ago. That's pretty upsetting for a number of reasons and I probably won't get to all of them no matter how long I ramble. I really was hoping to get away from all that when I went to the con. At the very least I'd have good things to fill that time and I could put something on the vacation form other than "Blow all my PTO before it's voided when I get laid off." Or when I quit, honestly.

Now that the refueling outage is over I'm back on nightshifts. So here I am about to power through another 12 hours of dead silence mostly by myself. Really great atmosphere to be in when you're constantly stewing in doubt about your future. I try to get it together, I try to psych myself up for this before work, but I can never get that to stick for very long. I really wish that I actually worked here instead of just being in the qualification pipeline. That would make it a lot easier for me to understand what I'm really looking at with this decision, and it would give me a way to get through the day to day stuff. If I had a single job to do I could keep pumping out electrons and feel good about that. As it stands I'm just qualifying and I've got another 18 months or so of that ahead of me. Turns out that "unstructured studying in service of a future than may never come" is a REAL easy thing to slack off on. It's really quiet at work. Quiet at home, too. I moved away from the life and people that I knew to chase this job. I don't have much going on here, and as with everything, I'm not sure it's worth getting into anything, because there's every chance this place won't stick. I've got nothing in the present, and also maybe-nothing in the future.

There's a general tone that they'll make it worth my while if I stay, and that's been confirmed more officially in recent weeks. Of course money and employee benefits don't really help what's actually bothering me. The thing that I actually want is the thing nobody can give me, but it was really nice to have that validation. They were acknowledging that they were putting me through purgatory, and that me sticking it out would be worth something to them.

I came here prepared to work, but for someone who's just climbed aboard, asking me to suffer for them like this feels like a bit much. I guess I really just have to keep my cards close to my chest for the moment and give myself a chance to introspect a little more during my time off. This has been brewing for a long time, but it still feels like I'm rushing into this decision. Then again, as bad as quitting at this point looks, I'm sure that stringing them along a whole bunch before doing so would be worse, as would having my performance stagnate to the point that I got fired. Astonishingly nobody seems to have taken notice of that yet, but I know that I've been slipping dramatically of late. That WILL happen if I don't act one way or the other. If only I... actually had some information to base this decision on.

Twelve hours is a very long time to be doing just nebulous, self-directed study. I knew people in college who would just marathon-jam crazy amounts of information into their brain at a huge stretch. I don't have clinical authority to say whether or not that really works, but they seemed to believe in it. That's never worked for me. With just a huge solid brick of studying I start seeing diminishing returns around the three or four hour range, and I'm totally useless by eight or so. It takes a lot of willpower to stay focused and productive for that long. I know that some people would welcome that autonomy, and in some ways I'm one of them. This aspect isn't a killer, but it feeds into the next important point behind all this.

It just makes me feel lonely and powerless. I have no ties here, and I can't see the point in making any when that might all be rendered pointless. It affects every decision that I make. Do I want to buy furnishings for my new apartment? Not if I'm going to lose my job. Do I want to get to know people in the area? Not if I'm going to lose my job. Do I want to commission a fursuit? Not if I'm going to lose my job. Do I want to replace my 14 year old car? Not if I'm going to lose my job. Do I want to reregister my car in Ohio? Change my driver's license, make travel plans, actually live my life at all? Not if I'm going to lose my job. That possibility hangs over me all the time.

The actual process of being laid off isn't what bothers me. It's what leads up to that. It's a lot of work to push through all this do-it-yourself training. I could do that if I knew that there was something worth working for at the end of the process. As it stands though, there's no such certainty, and there won't be any for a long time. What it comes down to is that the licensing process takes two years. If I'm laid off at any time during that period, all the work I did will have been for nothing. Yeah, I'll have been paid for all that time, but I'm not one of those people that dreams of being paid to accomplish nothing. Sure, this could very easily all turn out fine and have a happy ending, but it'll be more than a year before we know for certain what will happen.

A lot of this is because I'm so new here. If I'd had a chance to become invested in this company then I might be willing to stick it out, but as it stands, my first impression of this place was them declaring bankruptcy. It would be like if someone shit on the dinner table during a first date. This combines all the stress of getting a new job with all the stress of losing one. Plus, I'm not even doing any actual work. Everyone keeps saying to just stay focused on day-to-day operations. Keep turning out power and the big stuff will happen however it happens. I'm sure that's good advice, but I don't contribute in any way to making power. And I won't for another 18 months or so, if there's even still a job to be had at that point. I don't like being here "just in case the plant doesn't close". That's not a satisfying raison d'être. I'm not even rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. I'm training to one day rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

I do try to acknowledge the good stuff. People always try to remind me of that. My situation is actually really great compared to a lot of other potential situations. There's a tremendous amount of fortune that has to happen before "Do I find this job enjoyable and fulfilling?" even enters the decision-making process. But you know what? That's how the human mind works. I really wish it didn't work that way. I really wish that the "Starving children in Africa" line actually worked on me. It would be WAY easier to be happy if I could swallow that crap but you know what? It doesn't work like that! And maybe it's for the best that it doesn't. What kind of person feels better when you call attention to the suffering of other people? That's kind of sadistic, really.

"It could be worse" doesn't help. If I were in a crowded room pounding a nail through somebody's wrist, is everybody else in there going to think "Oh well I've got it pretty good. At least nobody's pounding a nail through my wrist."? No! The fact that a particular bad thing is not happening to you is not a source of comfort. I'm so happy for you if listing off a list of misfortunes that you haven't suffered is enough for you to feel satisfied with life, but I need more than that. That's like the "nice guys" who can't seem to get a date and can't figure out why. "I mean, I'm not a total douche like all those other guys!" Really? That's your virtue? "Not completely sucking" is gonna be your big selling point? Yeah, I hate to break it to you but there are people out there who don't suck and are ALSO interesting, or also caring and thoughtful, or also passionate and skilled lovers. You need something more than "not suck" to attract women and I need something more than "not suck" to be happy with my career.

That's the thing that's different about high-level skilled work. You need different things to let you do it effectively. If somebody's out there making hubcaps for money, then sure, more money could make him work harder or longer at making more hubcaps. But you can't say "Hey, here's money, be a better leader." Here's money, inspire people. Here's money, work tirelessly for years towards an end that may never come. I didn't come here for the money. I don't have any huge money sinks like drugs or boats or gambling or sportscars or children. When I suffered in the navy and cried out that the conditions were inhumane, as in literally barred by the Geneva Conventions, they said to me "Hey, they're paying you." That's bullshit. I decided then that I wasn't going to allow anybody else to pay me to suffer. I went and got a civilian job because I thought I'd enjoy it and find it fulfilling. That's the dream isn't it? To be paid for doing something you believe in? And maybe I would have liked this thing. Had the place not gone to shit as soon as I walked in the door. So now I'll never know.

I don't know what will make me happy. Like Edison, I can only tell you what hasn't worked.

HR has expressed some concerns about how some of us might be considering leaving the company. They were right to worry. I'm starting to feel like I can't stick it out anymore. It's not like this struggle is new. Literally the first time I asked for a qualification signature the person that I was talking to said "Why bother? The place is closing anyways." So there was basically never a time when this bankruptcy wasn't coloring my experience here.

I had a big low point in dealing with this in February. It was bad company news every day at work and I'd just gotten some bad medical news in my off time. My performance slipped quite a bit. For a solid week I got almost nothing done. I talked it over with my supervisor and he understood. He gave me some advice that helped me push past that. Naturally the refueling outage came right after that and everybody was too busy to talk to me for a whole month, but that's nobody's fault. So I managed to push through that too.

That's the thing though. I've just been pushing past every day, and every day that pushing gets a little harder. It takes an incredible amount of willpower to grind through something when you're not sure the reason that you got into it is valid anymore. It's worn me down. The reason that I made it through all that stuff was because I kept thinking "I've just gotta make it to April. After the bankruptcy announcement we'll finally get some answers." Well, that announcement came, and there weren't any answers. In fact I came to find out that it'll be at least a year before we get a concrete answer. Having gone through five months of "Well, we'll see. You could be laid off at any time." I don't think I can go through a year of that.

The other new guys, they seem to be fine sticking it out. But they've got wives, children, houses and other commitments. Not only did they bring the most important parts of their lives with them when they came here, they need that money, and it's very difficult for them to move. If their expenses are taken care of and there's some chance they might get to stay here, it's worth waiting it out for them. I don't have any of that. It's really easy for me to move. I just got here and I've got no ties to this place. I didn't come here because I really wanted to live in Ohio, or because I wanted to make a ton of money. I came here because I really wanted to do this job. So when it looks like I might not even get that, I'm out of reasons to stick around.

I know that they still need me here to make the plant look saveable and sustainable in order to have their best chance at getting to that next refuel, and I DO want to do that. When I got to this impasse I had to say to myself "Well, when I came here I said that I really want this job because I really believe in this industry. I guess it's time to demonstrate that." I feel like I still want that, but I don't know if I can actually follow through on it. I don't know if I am psychologically able to continue doing this under these conditions.

These days it feels like I'm exhausted as soon as I walk in the door. There are times when I'll just sit at my desk with my head in my hands for 20 minutes thinking "Oh my God what am I going to do?" I'm just... out of it. I know that won't work. I hear it all the time "You've gotta be focused and alert. You've gotta be completely on your game 100% of the time." And really, I don't think I can promise that. I don't think that I can be the kind of worker that they need me to be under these conditions.

Could I keep showing up and painfully dragging myself along for another couple months before I completely give out? Yeah, probably. I've done worse than this. I can't deny that the extra time would give me a better shot at getting the answers that I need. Hanging on when I know what I know now would be disingenuous of me though. Every check that I get from this company is just me furthering a promise that I don't think I can keep. If I were actually making power that would be different, but I'm not. I'm not contributing any value to the company right now and if I don't think I'll be able to contribute that value in the future then I can't keep taking their money.

There are lots of ways in which this isn't a disaster, mind. I'll have a fair few safety nets to rely on no matter how this turns out in the end. That really is the thing, though. Pointing out reasons that I should be happy is pretty counter-productive. Knowing that I should be happy and I'm not just makes me feel sad and like a failure for BEING sad. That was the big lesson of this convention. I tried to escape all this, even just temporarily, and I failed. I slept away huge chunks of it, and I was too lethargic and unmotivated to do a great many of the things I planned to. I took some time off to do one of the things I love doing most in my life, something that I thought wasn't ruinable... it suffered terribly from this fog that's taken over me since the bankruptcy announcement. There are plenty of times when I feel like I have it together, and then I just don't.

I was in a have-it-together moment in the middle of the con, really hitting my stride. Then I saw JBadger's fursuit up on the block at the charity auction. That sight stabbed into my chest and right out the other side. When I learned that he died two years ago it was something that I acknowledged, and I conveyed my sympathies to those who knew him better than I. Really though, it wasn't tangible to me until I saw that empty suit up there. I'd gotten to know Nom Crunch a lot better than I ever did his pilot. Having that suit get sold off brought that home. Nom Crunch was gone too.

I met him at Furthemore number 1 all those years ago. I was just attending that year. The staff hadn't come after me with the big butterfly net yet. I ended up watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time then. It was practically coincidental, really. I didn't plan to go with it, but I was still in the room from a previous panel and the show came to me. It was a packed house, so Nom Crunch asked if he could sit next to me. I couldn't very well turn him away, that being one of the last remaining seats in the house right in the front row. He was quite stout of build, at least in comparison to the 180-odd pounds of stringy nerd that was seated to his left, so physical contact of a sort was unavoidable. I knew it was incidental contact and didn't mean anything, so I tried to be okay with that, to be polite. Even though that sort of thing was on the periphery of my comfort zone at the time.

At the time I just wasn’t a physically affectionate person. I figured that was just how I was. People have pointed out to me recently that it’s odd how I always go for the handshake first. That’s still my instinct and it takes time for me to parse out that hugging is an option now because it's a thing I enjoy these days. I feel like I still owe Protocollie a hug. First year that I staffed I saved his bacon on setting up main events and he tried to hug me as thanks. I felt pretty bad asking him not to.

There were some delays in setting up the movie, so we talked a bit since we had the chance. I think he could tell that this was a little weird for me and he was trying to dissipate the tension a little. For his part, Nom Crunch was as accommodating as he could be given the situation. He kept his tail out of my way, did his best to give me room and make me as comfortable as he could. Of course, even sitting in a fursuit is demanding. He couldn't hold out forever. He asked if he could put his arm on my chair to support his weight a little more evenly. I couldn't deny him that mercy. As he did any time he made a move that might cause me discomfort, he asked if it was okay after he repositioned himself. He was a fair bit closer to me, having basically wrapped his arm around my back, but I found... it actually was okay. Maybe even better than okay. He was so understanding and empathetic, it was incredibly disarming. I ran out of room for my own arm between us, and eventually I wrapped it around his back in kind.

It was very out-of-character for me. I really have no explanation for it. It was just one of a string of those tiny "is this okay" steps, every one of which felt right to me, presented in that innocuous and comforting way of his. It's hard to pinpoint the transition between just playing along and genuinely enjoying myself, but those are certainly the start and end points of this little cinematic experience. While they were setting the projector up I was just barely accepting the idea of sitting so close to a stranger, and by the time the credits rolled that silly purple-striped badger was sitting on my lap and we were squeezing the stuffing out of each other. And I couldn't have been happier about that.

He touched me. Quite literally so. That opened me up a little bit to a new world that I've had the time of my life exploring. That was a big part of why I had such a good time at the con that year, and why I fell in love with Furthemore so quickly. I really missed out by never telling him that. It's so... complicated, to lose someone that you only knew through fursuiting or online or through some other semi-isolating medium. You feel like the loss isn't as great and you shouldn't feel all that sad, and then you're disappointed in yourself when you definitely DO feel all that sad. Like the only thing to be sad about is sadness itself...

Ah. Wow. I really hope that wasn't as difficult to read as it was to write. I feel like all this has been quite a heavy burden to push on you, my loyal reading public. I hesitate to put all this out there, but just as these feelings won't get un-felt, I feel like it would be wrong if all that I've said were un-said. My profound thanks if you've stuck it out this long. I wish I had some kind of wrap-up or conclusive takeaway for you, but life doesn't always have a satisfying narrative arc such as that one. Sometimes life just is, and all you can do is live it.