An addendum to yesterday’s WorldCon summary: I did not win the Sidewise Award for Alternate History (not-won plaque is pictured). This is a little sad, of course. I would have preferred to win. But it was still a fantastic experience, with much excitement and joy. I got to meet some cool people, and I got a small taste of what being up for an award is like. :)
As promised, now some more talk about constantly living a lie.
I spent all of Wens-Sat being “on”, ie: acting social and out-going. I do enjoy this, but it’s draining. Every now and then it’s kinda lonely too. This is an unavoidable aspect of meeting new people for the first time, you can’t open right up immediately. It’s why I prefer to stick with at least one person for a whole con, it expands your pool of people you can chat with without having to perform as much. But a LOT of WorldCon was putting my best presentation forward at almost all times, and good lord was that tiring! By the time I checked out of the hotel Sunday, I couldn’t really talk to anyone anymore. All Monday I felt like I was sick with a cold, it was awful. I finally got 10 hours of sleep that night, and Tuesday I finally felt like a normal person again. I think I need to do a bit more self-care next time I go to a 5-day con.
Unrelated, but just occurring to me - I didn’t mention this in the previous post about Performing, but probably the part I like least about modern performance culture is the taboo regarding attraction. You’re allowed to act like you’re attracted to people, and flirt. Flirting is hella fun! But saying you find someone attractive out loud is forbidden unless you’re actually asking them out. Which is a little frustrating. Like, I find 80% of women within a decade of my age attractive, and having to suppress that is a bit of a psyche-drain. But I absolutely understand why that rule is there, so I follow it, and stick with flirting, and maybe now and then ask someone out. It’s not my ideal world, but it’s the best compromise between differing agents, so you play the part that makes the social group work best.
On a more personal note, sometimes the playing of roles can really lead one astray. I feel bad reaching out to my SO when I’m feeling certain types of emotional distress, because I don’t want to do the whole “emotional leach” thing. Is that a thing? I don’t want anyone to think “You only call me when you’re lonely, is that all I am to you? A loneliness sponge?” and so I don’t call. So I default to Performing Masculinity, ie: nothing hurts me. Now, I’m certainly not as good at this sort of thing as, say, The Man With No Name, but I do OK. I know how I’m supposed to act, and so I step into that role and go about the rest of my day. I did eventually text to test the waters and got a negative reaction, because at that point she was annoyed that I hadn’t called yet. Which meant after that I was performing even harder the rest of the con to pretend that didn’t bother me, and boy howdy, that’s not very fun. I did overall have a great time, because the majority of the time I was too busy doing other stuff to think about that, and because WorldCon is awesome, but man, it could have been better if I’d just picked up the damn phone. When I got home we hashed all that out and felt like complete idiots (me more than her), and now I shake my head when I think how easily all that could have been avoided. But nope! I was too cool and manly to let that sort of thing bother me. /sigh Sometimes I swear I haven’t learned a damn thing…