My Brain Is Trying To Tell Me Something

Stumbling through the days … I must be in post-con mode. What day is it anyway?

Post-convention disorder has many symptoms. One is a lack of sleep. Another is the sense that something urgent is happening somewhere, and soon I will have to be a part of it. Yet another is a lack of sleep.

Dammit, I already said that. Where’s my brain when I really need it?

This convention would have been better if I had proper sleep when I showed up. But day one of my Dragon*Con experience started with no sleep. I was up from the day before, coming in on an uncomfortable red-eye flight from Las Vegas. Flights to Vegas are always fun and exciting, filled with hope and wonder. Flights from Vegas are filled with poor people, lucky to still have the clothes on their back. I was just there for a connecting flight, but I still had to ride shotgun with the Ghosts of Money Past.

So I didn’t sleep on the flight. I worked till Friday at 5:00 pm, when I collapsed in a friend’s room. At 10:00 pm I got a shower and started work again. I got a few hours of sleep each day, typically from 2:00 am to 8:00 am. Each day was motivated by the need for a fire to be extinguished. Bad video feed, no audio in a panel room, televisions that wouldn’t tune into channel 16 … running from one emergency to the next.

It was a smooth convention, with fewer major fires than the years before. Only a few bands left pissed off. Only a few hosts experienced feedback. Nothing burst into flames. But the convention still requires staff to run on an artificial sense of urgency for maximum productivity.

Then comes Tuesday. Tuesday returns me to reality. Tuesday is work, with laptops and e-mail. Tuesday is comprised of phone calls and scheduled meetings. Tuesday doesn’t need a radio or a video camera.

Tuesday would be a great day to take a nap.

Tuesday blurs into Wednesday. Wednesday wants to be postponed till Thursday, so I can sleep. But Thursday means travel. Friday means a meeting in another timezone.

I can sleep Saturday. For Sunday I go to Japan, and work in convention mode again. Japan means 14,000 frequent flyer miles. Japan means 12 hour time changes and tiny cars. Japan means wearing suits and having meetings with executives.

My brain is trying to tell me something. I’ll make sure to listen to it when I wake up.