Separate Busy Days
Howard called me twice today and the booth crew called me once with a quick question. I am so very removed from what they are experiencing. It is strange to realize that Howard has spent all of his day running and talking with people, trying to be entertaining, and selling merchandise. In contrast, I slept late, took my kids to a dinosaur museum, sat with them to watch Jurrasic Park, and then cleared out my office for guests by stacking all of the merchandise for WorldCon in the front room. Both of us where quite busy, but in very different ways. I’m glad to have my day, but I’m starting to feel a wish that I could have some more convention type days in the future.
When Howard calls we talk about how the current event is going, what should be done differently for future events, and which projects we should prioritize in the coming year. There are always more projects than time. Always. This year the GenCon discussions circle the fact that next year GenCon and WorldCon happen during the same week. We’re currently planning to pick WorldCon in London. This is going to require some structuring so we can bow out of the GenCon booth for one year and step back in the year after that. So we talked a bit about how that is going to have to work.
Howard was tired, but not beaten down. I’m glad to hear that. In the past convention stress has been hard on him. I’m watching this year to see how things are different now that he’s on anti-depressants. That is part of my job too, I observe the changes and tell Howard about what I see, because trying to live in your own brain while watching for the differences created by a chemical change is crazy-making. So far, good. I hope he sleeps well tonight so that tomorrow can be another good day.
I slept well last night, which was a blessing because the night before had highly interrupted sleep. Gleek woke often and woke me as well. She claims she is not nervous for school, which was my fear regarding the disrupted sleep. Yet I watch her too, because both the doctor and I believed that we’d see an upswing of internal stress as school got close. I’m not seeing it yet, which is either really good news, or it means that we’ve all been too busy to spend much time contemplating the start of school.
I tell Howard a little about our day here at home, enough to let him know what is going on and that everyone here is doing fine. Mostly he doesn’t have energy to listen. He needs sleep or to empty his brain of business thoughts. It does not help if I try to give him home thoughts. Anything that is not a crisis can wait. We’ve had no crises yet this trip, not at home and not at the event. This makes me glad. It is always hard when Howard is stressed far away and there is nothing I can do to fix it. I think that is one of the hardest things about sending him away to conventions. It is particularly difficult if the problem is one that I could have solved if I’d managed to track all of the things.
Our phone calls are short. We say goodnight, because tomorrow we both have busy days.