MeghanIsMe

Turns out there is a fannish media-con happening in Regina today with an attendance of around 10,000. Shows how much I know about what's going on around here! But I haven't had a lot of motivation to keep track since I couldn't go to anything indoors.

Since I haven't gotten quantitative fit testing on an elastomeric mask done yet, I still can't go to this one. But it's really nice to think that, in the foreseeable future, this is something I will be able to do. I haven't been to a convention since before I moved to the Netherlands, which makes it at least four years. Maybe five. I do miss looking at board games for sale and playing them with people, among other things.

I think that I often have a question for people at the end of my posts because I want there to be some context and backstory, and that because of that my question gets missed. So I'll lead (if you can call the end of the first paragraph a lead) with a question: do I know anyone who has info about working with one department or another at Midwest Furfest? [This is more likely to garner responses on Facebook where I think I know folks who work the convention.] I'd like to do that. (If not, maybe I'll sign up through the website to be a volunteer, if it's not too late.)

I *think* I'd like to go to a convention again. It's been years. I really feel like I don't even know what to do at a convention. After I split up with my ex I was having really positive experiences socializing at such things. Then school, grad school, and depression consumed my life for, at this point, seven or eight years. I don't even know what I'd do there anymore. I imagine my first experiences at conventions when I started going without my parents, just awkwardly walking around the hallways, panels, and dealers' room all day and going home without talking to anyone. If I had the structure of working or volunteering, maybe I could meet people.

There are other things I'd like to go to, but it seems that timing is not great right now.

The next two cuddle events in Chicago are focused on women and gender-minority folks and I feel uncomfortable going. (I did contact the organizer to ask about the events, and though they did not say I shouldn't attend, I feel better right now not doing so.) The one after that will happen while I'm in Canada with Danae, so that puts things into January. There's another group of folks who have a monthly get-together, but the regular fourth Thursday time is Thanksgiving this month, and they can't do the week after because the organizer will be at Midwest Furfest.

My past experiences with trying to be a part of the social world of fandom is tainted by a lot of negative stuff related to my relationship with my ex and my own inability to establish connections even with people whose periphery I've been in for ten or fifteen years. It makes me feel sad and fatalistic. In a way, the idea of Danae finding a job elsewhere and giving me a chance to start completely over is really appealing. But there must be people in Chicago who would like me and who I'd enjoy spending time with. Maybe I can still find them.

Relatedly, I was just approved to join the Chicago Polyamory group here on Facebook. Maybe on Friday I can do my introductory post and start being social there with folks who there's a potential of actually meeting in real life.

I don't have a whole lot of time to write this weekend. But I just saw a presentation on changing presentations of gender roles and sexual orientation through the lens of forty years of Kirk/Spock slash.

Plus a paper looking at self-organizing structures within egalitarian societies as shown through the events of Twitch Plays Pokemon.

I like anthropologists.