Thoughts on post-con blues

[beige_alert]

In the wake of DucKon almeda and tigertoy have put up post-con depression posts, which got me thinking about the phenomenon. I think I feel a lot less of it than I used to.

I think one reason is simple. Instead of one con a year, I attend around three plus a bunch of Milwaukee house filks, Barb’s Basement concerts, and the Lytheria parties for Halloween and New Years. The pain of parting is less when the next meeting is not far off.

Somewhat paradoxically, I think that the other factor is that I generally have a better time these days and more social interaction with friends. Not that I never had any social contact before---I think the movie line I’m looking for is from Jade, “I do consider sex to be a social contact”---but on the whole there was a tendency to not actually talk to anyone. I would then be left with a feeling of missed opportunity, my one weekend to make friends wasted.

I’m still shy and socially awkward, but I am a filk performer now, which provides some chance to connect to people, but most of all I’ve spent enough time in small groups with the Milwaukee filk gang and some of the Chicagoans (and others!) who make it up here regularly to have formed some friendships, so I do have some people to talk to, not to mention hug. I may also be gradually getting a bit more comfortable trying to talk to people, with the practice.

Comments

[beige-alert.livejournal.com]

Well, it's not as if I knew there were tons of cool people here when I moved here. I thought it was just another dull, smallish city where it snows a lot. No con has survived here for more than a few years, but we do seem to have a lot of cool fannish types. We also have people who organize events---Barb and Carol (and Richard and John) in particular, and probably others I'm less aware of. Maybe that's what Champaign needs....