Decompressing

Today is my day to decompress from the convention. Howard’s post-convention decompression usually consists of him sleeping a lot. For me, the decompression is much more based in sorting through and making sense of everything I hauled home with me.

Naturally there is the physical baggage. We bought things in Canada and I need to find places for them to belong. I need to dump the clothes out where they can be washed. I need to count the inventory that we brought home and stack it back with the other books in the basement. I need to empty the suitcases completely, checking carefully in all the pockets for odd pieces of paper shoved hastily in “safe” places. Then I need to put the suitcases away.

Associated with the physical baggage, particularly the inventory, there is a need to assess the profitability of the convention. I need to double check the math on the sales to make sure that our wonderful dealer got paid enough. I need to figure out how many books we sold, how many we gave away, and how many we brought home. Ditto on posters and pins. I need to file this information where I can access it when deciding how much stuff to mail to the next convention.

Then there is all the contact information that I need to go through. We met lots of people at the convention. Some of them gave us business cards. Some of them just wrote contact info on various pieces of paper. I need to find all of that and sort through it before I forget why I need the contact info in the first place. There are half-bartered deals that I need to finish up. There are books that I’ve promised to send. There are people I promised to talk to further. There are blogs and websites to look at. I don’t want to be left staring at a business card and not remembering who gave it to me or why. Even more important to write down are the people with whom I want to communicate further, who did not give me a business card. Over the next week I need to close the loop on all of these contacts. I need to email people, or send books, or buy things from them.

Last, but definitely not least, is the mental sorting. I crammed my head full of new experiences and thoughts. I must sort through those and record them. I need to see how these new ideas bounce off of my old ideas. I need to blog. This will also take some time. I can’t get it all done in a single day, but I do need to take notes to make sure that my return to regular routine doesn’t cause me to forget the thoughts completely. I’ve had so many cool thoughts. I don’t want to lose them.

There is also sleeping. I need to do more of that.