The Weekend
The Stilyagi Spring Dance on Friday night was a wonderfully fun event. I felt the bond with the people around me more strongly than usual, and several friends and strangers went out of their way to be sweet and friendly to me.
The party doubled as an informal business meeting, in which I was elected to the board of directors of the Ann Arbor Science Fiction Association. I'm qualified to be on the board basically because I possess the ability to show up for meetings. I think I have more flexibility because of fewer non-fandom responsibilities to compete for my schedule than others have. Neither hurricane nor blizzard nor dead of night, nor car troubles nor distance to Ann Arbor will persuade me to blow off seeing my friends. Attention is my downfall; I have a notorious tendency to drive through all those hardships only to discover that I got the time or day wrong. My point is that it's not for lack of dedication.
Hence it was appropriate that the next morning I showed up at my parents' house to greet my brother Andy who was supposed to have the weekend off from college at Pensacola Concentration Camp, only to be informed that they gave me the wrong date. I spent the rest of the day at home alone, working on Penguicon and renting a couple of movies. was in Montgomery, Alabama all weekend visiting her friend who introduced us to each other ten years ago. And of course was at the wedding of and . So it was quiet.
I suppose I had some kind of high Friday night which had to balance, because Saturday is the first time in longer than I can remember that I've felt "down." It was unusual for me, but I suppose everyone must weather such things and I'm a hundred times luckier in my steady chemical balance than others who I could name. But I paced a lot, and thought a lot. Every time I stopped pacing and went to pick up the phone, I realized everyone I wanted to talk to was at the Penguicon hotel because of the wedding. Bill says they had a great time.
I thought about how pleased I am with my relationships, but also about the pointlessness of personality politics. I thought about what I'm doing with my life, but also about the looming threat of increased responsibility. I realized for the first time that with the projects I'm working on for Penguicon, I'm fulfilling my life's dream of being a Disney Imagineer, bringing to pass shiny event attractions like the Tux "theme-park" costume, OpenCola, the Pantropia game that will hang from the ceiling, informational kiosks, and the Coffee Ritual show. And if you thought my other program books were flashy, you ain't seen nothing yet!
But... if I move any higher up the ladder I wouldn't have time to do the hands-on. I'd delegate it. I'd step back to a wider-focused view restricted to all the tasks of the job which I hate; all the stuff I hold my nose and grit my teeth and do, miserably, as a wage-slave from nine-to-five all week: budgets, price quotes, nagging people, keeping track, and judgement calls for which I have no basis but to toss a coin. It's not imagination or storytelling or art, it's drudgery. The necessary evils of life would extend out to become all of life. This is why, this time, every pretty girl in Fandom batting their eyelashes at me simultaneously would not suffice to get me to do it.
And yet somebody does it. Bless the Conchairs; bless them, bless them, bless them. YES, that includes the ones I may disagree with or who are flawed or who so-and-so may not like. There are precious few legitimate reasons to give grief to Conchairs, when this sacrifice is taken into consideration.
Comments
brendand on Mar. 23, 2005 7:35 PM
For the record... I wasn't at the wedding. Not because I had anything better to do... I just somehow ended up left off of the guest list.
sarahmichigan on Mar. 25, 2005 3:50 PM
You seem familiar. I know we have LJ friends in common, but I suspect we also have real-world acquaintances in common (I've met the couple getting married, though would not say I know them well.)
matt-arnold on Mar. 25, 2005 5:10 PM
All of the lj friends we have in common are real-world friends of mine. At least, was my acquaintance until he moved away. I don't think I've met you though. I see that is in the Penguicon community. Perhaps I know him? I don't know.
Anonymous on Mar. 25, 2005 7:30 PM
TEmujin9 added me because my husband (dionysus1999) and I were at Penguicon last year. I've met at least one of our mutual LJ friends in person, but only briefly.
Leave a Comment