Profoundly stressed.

[baratron]

Not in a terribly good mood. Have - hopefully! - sorted out my sleep patterns via a rather uncomfortable weekend. Now incredibly anxious about BiCon. As far as I'm aware, I'm the only person not on the team who's dreading it.

I always find BiCon immensely stressful. Not like alt.polycon, which I desperately wish was still happening, where I drop in and instantly feel at home. BiCon is too big, too crowded, too many people I don't know, too many people I don't want to shame myself in front of.

Mostly what gets me is panicking about having to provide up to three meals a day for myself by cooking. I... haven't been well enough to do that for a long time. Actually, I haven't even been able to cook one meal a day for myself for ages. I can do pasta with fake cheese or emergency chocolate cake (the 5 minute mug cake that you cook in the microwave), but that's it. Most of the time, we eat out or Richard brings home food after work, because I can't manage to cook and he doesn't have enough spare time to. God knows how I'd survive if I didn't live with someone who earns decent money.

And I'm having my usual panic about food intolerances. I accidentally ate some noodles-with-egg-in a couple of weekends ago, and the resulting 24 hours of digestive explosion (could go into details here - know that you'll prefer it if I don't) was enough to prove once again, if I ever needed reminding, that straying outside veganism is a VERY bad idea for h-ls. And the more stressed I get, oddly, the pickier I get about food. It may be London, but it's the other bloody side of London, where I don't know anywhere to get takeaway food that I can eat. And I don't know how to cope for up to four days without Costa (can handle Caffe Nero at a pinch - know for certain that no other coffee chains can provide hot chocolate uncontaminated by dairy. Nor can Costa outlets. Only the actual franchised stores).

So I'm working on the basis that I'll take my stuff over there on Friday at some stage, don't know how, and stay for as long as I can bear it. Maybe I'll calm down and have a good time. Maybe I won't. Maybe I'll stay there during the day and come home at night. Maybe I'll stay there some nights. Don't know. Being totally avoidant about the whole thing right now.

Really don't want Geek Answer Syndrome right now. It doesn't mix well with bad brain chemistry.

Comments

[x-mass.livejournal.com]

which flat are you in I believe were in shepard 1. If your not in our flat you could see if you can move. that would be me you, rhilato and the_borderer

[jackspryte.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I hope that it works out to be fun and you find good solutions to these issues.

I miss alt.polycon too. Oddly, I did okay at PAX East, even though it was around 60,000 people. It's like there's a stretch where there are too many people and it freaks me out but then on the other side of that, there's a point where there are so many people that I feel utterly anonymous and that alleviates some of my worries. I will say that I didn't manage to re-adjust my view of the situation such that I could have fun until the second day, though.

[ailbhe]

I kind of want an alt.polycon I can go to again. I only got to one, ever. But now... still as little money, less time. Poot.

[brooksmoses]

Wow. 60,000 is above my mental threshold for "medium-sized town". (When I was growing up, the nearby town was about that size, plus or minus 10,000 depending on whether college was in session.)

I find the fact that a convention of that size has grown out of a webcomic to be deeply brain-bending.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Yeah, PAX is great. There are so many people that you don't need to feel afraid of looking like an idiot in front of someone, because odds are that even if some disaster happened and if you did, you wouldn't see that person again anyway!

I basically find spaces with more than 70 and less than tens of thousands of people very difficult. Especially when pretty much everyone already knows or half-knows or has seen pretty much everyone before, so there's all the past history of who isn't speaking to whom about what. Like a big family wedding. Ugh.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Hope it goes okay!

[skibbley.livejournal.com]

Hope you can work something out. Don't forget you have many friends at BiCon and some of us can make vegan food and drinks no problem and like to share them.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

The problem is, I don't feel like I have the "right" to anyone's time. Because everyone I know who'll be at BiCon will be rushing around to try to spend as much time with everyone else they know at BiCon: all the friends and even partners that they don't get to see for most of the year.

[skibbley.livejournal.com]

Your friends will all offer some of their time and there will be many of us at BiCon. Many of us feel more like we are friends when we get to do something for people we like.

I'd really like to see you and am happy to offer food.

[nitoda]

I'm with Grant on this one - don't forget your friends are there and don't mind if you can find the spoons to ask them to cook something for you. I could even make a special shopping trip if necessary. You have my mobile number, so use it if you need to. ::hugs:: and hoping to give you some in person very soon

[ludy]

*gentle hugs*