Disclaimer: In this blog, an emotionally stunted IT sperg struggles with the alien concept of ‘feelings’.  

DragonCon’s kickoff for the 25th year is in just a few days. Two more days at the office and then I’m off, for a week of total nerd hedonism, and my 11th consecutive DragonCon.

And honestly I couldn’t be less excited anymore.

I actually feel bad that I’m not excited, probably causing some sort of feedback loop making me feel worse and worse. This sort of feeling is normal most years, but generally it’ll crop up in the spring, when the convention seems so far away. The post-con blues, you might say, just rather delayed. And in those times I’ll sit around wondering whether I really feel like doing it again. Generally it doesn’t take long to get back into the spirit.

Went through it this year, too, and got past it as always. I’ve been eager to get a move on for a few months, and so ready! And now, not. A wealth of stresses, professional and (mostly) personal, have cropped up in the last couple of weeks. None would prevent me from being able to attend, but my excitement level is zero.

And I feel bad for feeling bad. It sort of feels like, in feeling bad, I’m blaming the people causing it all (which they do/did unintentionally and it really isn’t/wasn’t their fault). And that makes me feel bad because I know they don’t deserve it.

I will go, obviously, and I will have fun, and afterwards I’ll laugh at myself again for ever having thought such silly things about my favorite annual thing, ever. I’ll see good friends and laugh with them, make inappropriate jokes, get drunk, collect hilarious stories that I can write up with a completely unnecessary overabundance of adjectives, and suffer people’s drama, because that’s what happens at DragonCon. It’s a good thing.

I just wish it was as easy to shake it off this time. ‘Easy’ isn’t really how it works though.