The night before last, I was reluctant to pack. It’s only been a couple weeks since my trip to New Orleans, and I still haven’t recovered from it in some ways. But I did. I packed clothes into the same suitcase as my merch, and went to bed. The next day I dragged myself down to Union Station and got on the train, with a little help hauling my heavy bag up into the train from a woman carrying a Stormtrooper helmet.
I got there and set up, slouched around a bit, then hooked up with Amara and Matt for conversation and BEER. I fell into bed around one, and woke up early Saturday morning with a slight hangover. Not a huge one; it was easily dispelled by a couple glasses of water.
On the way to the convention center, I did some math in my head. I realized that there is absolutely no way I could make a profit this con, even if I sold every single bit of merch I’d brought. I’d missed out on the $80/night block of hotel rooms reserved for dealers, and ended up getting a nice room in the Doubletree with a single king bed and a balcony. It was basically either that or a crapshoot on something cheap on Hotwire, and I didn’t want to be miserable at my first time at a con. So I kinda splurged, and decided to halfway consider this a vacation.
Knowing that my table performance could not have ANYTHING to do with how the weekend went was really freeing. I was able to avoid that high stress zone when OMG NOBODY’S BUYING STUFF I’M DOOMED on the beginning of the first day, and just casually engage people who slowed to a stop because my art caught their eye. My first sale came pretty early in the day, to a woman dressed up as Gwendolyn from Saga. Later on Lee Moyer passed by and we caught up on what’s been up in our respective lives since we met at Foolscap a couple of years. And later still Mike Dringenberg came by and grabbed a Rita, gushing about how gorgeous my art is. I don’t think I’ve ever had two wikinotable people come talk to me in one day before.
I realized that I’d sold close to half of the Ritas I’d brought. Only a couple Tarot decks, but there were several people who oohed and aahed over it, who I’m pretty sure will be back at my table tomorrow, or visiting my site after their next paycheck.
I got the next page of Rita something like 98% done during the lulls, really all I need to do is shape the panel transition from the previous page, and copy the edge of some stuff from the new page to the previous page.
Mike had wandered by again near the end of dealer’s room hours, and we were talking about our respective escapades in burning out on animation. On a whim I invited him out to dinner. We went to Sizzle Pie and shouted at each other over the music for a bit.
That…. you know, that’s a pretty damn good first day for a con I was kinda cursing Past Peggy for signing up for, two days ago. I need to figure out how to just Not Care if I make a profit more often without the drastic measure of paying more than I could possibly make at the con for a hotel room.
I have absolutely no expectations for tomorrow beyond it ending with karaoke with some of the Portland folks and Erin. And beer. Portland always seems to involve beer.
But right now I think I’m gonna close the computer and lie here naked in a dark room, with the balcony door wide open and the sounds of Portland drifting in.