Holidays are never long enough

[shivver]

We've just gotten off a week-long winter holiday and a three-day weekend for MLK Jr Day, but it still feels like we work too much. Sigh. And then there's the long trek until the next holiday, which is the end of May. At least I have a break in February.


That break's for Gallifrey One; however, we are not attending this year. We bought the tickets (actually, back in 2020, and they were held over for 2022 when the 2021 Gally was canceled), and we even managed to get hotel rooms in the convention block. But we agonized over it until finally we decided no, the pandemic is going on, stronger than ever, and exposing ourselves like this is just stupid. Yes, we're vaccinated and boostered, and yes, the convention will be following all of the California-mandated laws and guidelines, and yes, we're going to miss Sacha Dhawan, Jo Martin, and Sophia Myles, but no, we can't do it. We don't want to get sick, and we don't want to contribute to this global catastrophe by helping it spread.

So we're not going, but we are taking the time off. And you know what? We are both so relieved of the stress.

In my last post, I noted that I wanted to pick writing back up again and hopefully finish and post four stories in January, and I'm actually halfway done with that! This inspiration mostly came from a challenge between me and romanajo123. Last year, around May or June, we challenged each other to establish a habit of writing every day by giving each other little prompts - just enough to get you to put words on paper, usually not enough for a full story. It worked for a while, then RL intervened and I disappeared for quite a while.

Well, we've picked it back up again, and I established a Dreamwidth community to keep it going (nothing better than public shaming for motivation!). It's called tenminutesaday, and anyone's welcome to join. We've been posting challenge prompts and filling them, and so far I've posted two of the finished stories to AO3, with one more to come soon. I also feel like the regular writing sessions are helping me get into the mindset of working on my other WIPs - I've been actually adding to them, rather than just sitting and staring at them. Maybe I'll actually finish some and reduce the list!

On the other hand, my husband has caught wind of my renewed interest in writing and has been coming up with new ideas, so it's very likely the WIP list will grow rather than shrink. :/

I'm still keeping up with physical activity on the Oculus, though not this particular weekend. My husband started playing a new game on the Switch and so he sits right in the middle of the only place in our house where there's enough space for Beat Saber or Supernatural. He also hurt his leg, so it's difficult for him to move, so that coupled with the game means I only got two chances to exercise. Now I'm working on clearing enough space in my room.

Oh, I did get to watch Around the World in 80 Days, thanks to dieastra, but I'm keeping that for another post, soon.

Comments

[arcanetrivia]

I'm a little surprised they didn't either cancel the con voluntarily or that it didn't get forcibly cancelled (some counties up in the SF bay were going back to banning gatherings over a certain size). The con I would normally have gone to on the same weekend was similarly cancelled in 2021 and tickets held over for 2022 but now that has been cancelled as well, with a new target date in August.

[shivver]

It might still get forcibly canceled, but Gally won't cancel voluntarily if they can help it. They're a fan-run con and a registered non-profit, so all of the money they need to put it on (paying for the hotel, paying the guests to appear, etc.) comes from ticket sales - they have no carryover from year to year. Since they've come this far, they've already spent all of that and cannot just postpone/reschedule - they'd have to fully cancel and the people who bought tickets would receive nothing.

It's really a tough position to be in. Do you open your doors with the tightest health security you can manage, knowing that your attendees are likely to get sick, or do you close the doors and lose all the money, force your regulars to buy a new ticket for next year's con, and take the reputation hit?

[arcanetrivia]

Same with my February con. I have no idea what kind of a hit they must have taken by breaking the contract with the hotel. They surely don't have any real kind of war chest.