If you're brave enough to fly

I attended Swancon for the first time today.

Most of you who know me know that I battle with social anxiety.  Over time, it really has become a thing that controls a lot of my life – something that, at times, even I’m not aware of how much it’s controlling.

I could have easily come up with an excuse not to go today.  But hell, I’ve been saying for enough years that I want to go and then ducking out at the last minute with some stupid excuse.  And the program this year was perfect for me to attend for a day – two writing streams!

And so, the husband and I packed up the kidlet this morning and headed out.

First thing is that attending a con with an almost-17-month-old is hard.  The kidlet is at an age where he’s not really content to sit still and wants to be running everywhere and playing with everything.  And he doesn’t understand why everything he sees can’t be his to play with.  The husband did a valiant job of looking after him while I attempted some panels, and entertained him while I spent money on books in the dealer’s room.

At lunchtime, the husband took the kidlet home and I was free to attend panels and catch up properly with people.  I met so many awesome people!  Too many to name, and I’m going to leave anyone out if I try and list everyone.  But if anyone is reading this LJ-side and I met you, I very probably didn’t connect your LJ name with your real name.  So feel free to say hi again so I can connect the two

I managed to attend some awesome panels in the afternoon – on the business of writing, Kaaron Warren interviewing Ellen Datlow (both of whom I could listen to for hours) and the Voyager authors having a chat.

I wanted to stay badly, but had to leave to attend to a kidlet (who, thankfully, was a good boy and went down for his nap for Daddy with no fuss and slept for 2.5 hours!), plus I was seriously running out of spoons.

Next year (yes, there is going to be a next year!) we’re tentatively thinking of booking a hotel room for the full span of the con and attending everything.  Failing that, I’ll definitely be there for at least a day

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.