You reach a point when you suddenly realize you are starting to measure things in decades. You are generally surprised by such revelations, and as you awake to this startling bit of information it occurs to you that perhaps you may be living in another dimension of time that normal people do not exist in because it doesn’t feel like the years are dragging by without magic or anything remarkable happening, that you are in fact, not headed for the dreaded mid-life crisis. (Of course, there is also the possibility that you’ve just been living your life in mid-life crisis mode all along and as such you don’t have to acknowledge or deal with any sort of grown up activity short of showing up to work and keeping the minimum amount of bills paid so you can throw parties on a semi-regular basis).
I am at this point where I am looking around noticing that I’ve been doing certain things for a while. My blog just went past 500 posts, I am well on my way to having sold 600 individual, unique pieces of handmade jewelry, I’ve produced hundreds of thousands of words of creative writing, I’ve hosted hundreds of social gatherings, large and small, and I’ve been attending Convergence for 18 years (or as I recently heard someone describe it -- Burning Man for nerds).
Next year marks the 20th anniversary of the convention and I was genuinely surprised to learn this fact. It has me reflecting on the many years that have passed, how each one has been a singular experience, and coming to the evolving conclusion that I’ve actually learned things about myself and others from attending this Sci-Fi/Fantasy hoedown.
I only missed the first year of the convention. I didn’t know the cities well yet, nor did I know any people here really. The handful of acquaintances that I did have thought such things were beneath them and as such I would often keep my preferences to myself, just going along with whatever they wanted to do (never a good idea as you spend countless hours bored out of your mind at baseball games and mediocre concerts) (remember: I’m a geek and a darksider-sports bore the crap out of me). I enter the “dating scene” (for you kids this is when you go out into the world to bars, clubs and various public places to awkwardly meet people and on occasion make the dubious decision to give someone your phone number-which they would then call you. On the phone. To Talk. I know-weird-and likely the way humans do it now by app is a better use of your time). I had been out of it for a while and was only really deciding what I was looking for and one of those things I made up my mind about was that I was not going to date anyone who didn’t at least respect my love for Sci-fi/Fantasy. I was done being shamed and made to feel like an idiot because of my tastes and quite frankly, realizing that my self-esteem was so low at the time that I let people manipulate me into pretending to enjoy things I didn’t was getting frustrating. You spend a lot of your young adult life recovering from trauma that you don’t even realize that you are suffering from, so giving up the things that made life better just gets to a point where it is not worth it anymore.
One fateful afternoon as I was dipping my toe into the shallow end of the pool of things I liked by using the internet to look up stuff I could buy on eBay that I was quite sure I needed to collect, I stumbled upon an advertisement for an event in which the Guest of Honor was going to be Neil Gaiman.
Now, I had read his work a few years before that and had adored it, but never in my young, wildest dreams had it occurred to me that at the time he was working and living around Minnesota/Wisconsin.
So I put the event on the calendar.
I showed up to this hotel in St. Paul on a particularly sweaty afternoon and bought a badge that had some sort of image of Trinity from the Matrix on it. I had no real idea what to make of what was happening around me as the very first thing I encountered was people in costumes. And I don’t mean your ordinary run-of-the-mill Halloween costume. I mean a full-on -I doubt I could tell if you were in the movie or just pretending to be- handmade piece of artistic craft. I was beyond impressed. I meandered about the hotel a bit having no real clue what to do and went to sit in a room where Neil would be reading and talking.
About 25-30 people joined me at some point and then the writers showed up. It was delightful to say the least. Neil was engaging and afterwards sat at the table to sign books and that weekend I went to every panel he was on and they also included writers Emma Bull and Will Shetterly talking to and speaking with some of the most nervous, geeky, flustered and shy nerds (including a girl who informed Neil she didn’t find him especially creative and he was just a total sweetheart to her and rather agreed that she was right) I have encountered and I was so, so very happy.
I was taken underwing by a few people and shown around parties that included Klingons and futuristic cityscapes, a concert by the Flash Girls and having my first real conversation with writers I truly admired. And under the non-stop lightning and unrelenting thunder of a Minnesota summer storm-I made the plan to attend the next year……more to come….including how Convergence helped me deal with the death of my mother….