When the statewide shutdown of Washington was announced, finally terminating plans for Emerald City Comic Con, I was disappointed. Of course, I was disappointed. I was all packed. I had contingencies in place for either a last-minute acceptance into the Artist Alley or a weekend spent selling Purrmaids for my friend Kiki. I had a pet-sitter lined up. I had even taken the studded winter tires off my car in anticipation of the 500-mile round-trip on roads which were unlikely to be snowy.
I was also profoundly relieved. Because I had read what epidemiologists were saying about the oncoming pandemic, and every risk-assessing neuron in my brain was screaming that a gathering thousands strong, inside, with people from all over the continent, which was already a proven mass-spreading event for things like colds and the flu, was a profoundly bad idea in the face of a novel and little-understood virus.
That was why I was relieved, of course. But at the same time, a small, Hobbitish part of my brain said now you can use that time off from life guarding to do the million art-and-writing projects you’ve been struggling with for the past year! And the relief doubled. And, my inner Hobbit went on, you won’t have to spend fourteen hours in a car! You won’t have to package up six days of con-meals. YOU WON’T HAVE TO FILE WA STATE SALES TAXES.
Conventions are very stressful for me. Setting aside the whole people people people PEOPLE EVERYWHERE OH GODS dynamic, which is probably stressful for everyone, there are a number of additional stressors specific to being a dealer/artist. The paperwork, for a start. And transporting inventory. Set up, tear down, and just the fact that you are working all out for upwards of four days straight, bracketed by a couple days of heavy packing/unpacking. I take vacation days off my life guarding job to do cons, but it’s not really a vacation. It’s my other job. Add to this the stressors of living alone and requiring a pet-sitter and solo drives. Personally, I also find the transition to con-life physically stressful. There’s a time shift to deal with as my normal routine starts around 4 am and ends around 7 pm, while convention routine is about three hours later. It’s a bit like going from west coast time to east coast time, and usually takes a day or two for me to adjust each way. Then there’s the interruption to my exercise routine—which is so vital to my mental health—and the stress, both mental and physical, of food. Do I pack in my meals? That is a lot of work. But if I eat out of vendor kiosks and restaurants not only is that expensive, the food is so different from what I normally eat it throws my whole body off kilter. What if people judge me for eating sardines out of the tin behind my table? What if I’m invited to a social dinner and have to navigate a over-appetizing menu with an exhausted tank of executive function? I’ve eaten myself sick at cons multiple times and always regretted it no matter how tasty the pizza was.
So while I was disappointed and relieved, my inner Hobbit was downright delighted. No car trips! No crowds! No need to resist people literally putting candy on my table! Just my normal exercise routine and my normal diet, lots of dog and kitty cuddles, and maybe some extra sleep.
A week later—the week ECCC would have been—the state of Oregon went into lockdown. The pools closed. It snowed (good thing I didn’t have to drive over the pass!) and my week-long vacation turned into a strange dreamlike spring in which I did more writing, more artwork, and more bike riding than I had since moving to Bend four years ago.
Instead of Emerald City Comic Con, I got my online store set up so that I could sell product online. Instead of Biggest Little FurCon I finished the interior and cover illustrations for Lucena in the House of Madgrin. Instead of AnthroCon I did the cover illustration for Professor Odd Season Two. Instead of WorldCon I published Lucena. And instead of Rose City Comic Con I ran my very first Kickstarter to launch Professor Odd Season Two.
With cons first postponing and then canceling, whole vistas of time opened up before me. It wasn’t just hours in my day, it was the continuity of being at home, having a routine, and having a big part of that routine being artwork and writing. So behind the big milestones like the store or a book going out, I was also writing new material. This year I wrote the first two acts of The Urviianiy, which is a completely original mythology set on a group of draconic (as opposed to volcanic) islands. Patrons are getting an early look at these stories, which are somewhere between the Greek Myths a la Robert Graves and Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi and Emil books. I also wrote the first three episodes of Professor Odd Season Four, and two additional chapters of Driving Arcana Wheel 4.
As the pandemic spread, and conventions in the second half of 2020 and early 2021 cancelled, the time I would have spent applying for Dealer Rooms or Artist Alleys went into doing restorative stuff like kettlebells and mountain biking. Which in turn fed into more creative work.
Somewhere in the summer the pool opened up and I got to life guard again, but the framework which I’d erected during the three month shut-down was able to adapt—though output did slow. But life guarding gets me a steady(ish) paycheck and health insurance, which helps fill the financial hole left by the loss of conventions, so it’s not an unfair trade.
Guarding does squeeze my life, however, and I was worried how I would handle the helter skelter of my Kickstarter launch while working at the pool. But that week the smoke from our catastrophic wildfires descended on Bend and forced the pools to close again. So I got to launch my Kickstarter and pour all my life guarding time into working the launch. By the time the smoke lifted and the pools reopened I had funded comfortably and could keep it chugging along in between shifts at the pool.
The experience inspired me to take a pre-holiday vacation the week after Thanksgiving to refocus and hopefully sell some Christmas presents, when word came up (literally, I was sitting in the life guard stand and the oncoming guard told me from the deck) that Oregon was going into a freeze over the weeks around Thanksgiving.
That was a month ago. The freeze has technically lifted, but my county (Deschutes) has landed in the Extreme Risk category, which means the pools are still closed, and I am left to enjoy a second shut down. I‘ve used the time to run a holiday sale on the webstore, send out cards, decorate, and also push along a couple long term projects which should come to fruition early in the New Year.
I recognize that I am lucky. I do not want by recounting my lucky experience to dismiss the terrible impact this pandemic has had on the world—our Post Office, healthcare providers, meat packers, prison inmates, and other vulnerable people. But so much has been said that is depressing, demoralizing, or just plain saddening, that I feel it is acceptable—even imperative—to share news that is uplifting, encouraging, and happy.
This fall I purchased a fat bike. Previous winters I have spent exercising in the pool, but this winter the pool is closed, so I am dividing my time between kettlebells in my living room, and (literally) freezing rides in the snow and ice. It’s not the same as summer riding (nothing is) but it is still riding, and has allowed me to truly enjoy the winter landscape in a way I never have before. And there is a magic in cruising through the snow-creamed trees on 4.6” wide tires across pristine, sparkling white fields, while the precious winter sun slices golden rays between the branches lighting rainbow diamonds all around you that is unmatched by any other experience. Rides are necessarily shorter (my heated insoles give up after about three hours)—but that is okay. It leaves me more time for art and writing.
A month from now it will have been a year since my last convention. That was Further Confusion in 2020, where I needed my studded winter tires to get me down 97 after a blistering winter storm that left even the highway packed with ice and snow. Despite the harrowing drive, it was a good con. I got to see friends and family, close out one chapter of my life, and open another. It just turned out to be a different chapter than I thought it would be.
This year I will be working on the final edits and illustrations for Driving Arcana Wheel 3, with a Kickstarter campaign to follow.
When the pool sent out the recall to life guards during the initial reopening, less than half answered. Few of us had been able to put our lives on hold, and many had moved on. Literally: one guard moved to Mount Hood to take a different job. And while I did rejoin the team—and I will go back to guarding the pool whenever Deschutes struggles out of Extreme Risk—I recognize that I have also moved on, metaphorically. This pandemic has jarred me out of my life’s track, but I have found another, and in some ways I like it better. There will be no going back to the way things were Before, only more change—and hopefully, change for the better.
I have been lucky, and for longer than just this year. I have always recognized this luck, and strived to take full advantage of it, but now more than ever I am digging in, pulling taut on every rope of opportunity I possess, and reassessing what I once thought I knew about myself, my work, and how one relates to the other.
A year without cons has taught me that I do not need cons. They have benefits, but so does staying at home and getting a lot of writing done. Even after the pool reopens, even after the vaccine, I do not think I will go to as many cons, and those that I do, they will be closer to home. The time is too precious.
This is assuming, of course, that conventions resume in the manner they once were. Which is not guaranteed. Conventions are run by people, and I am not the only person who has been changed by this plague. Some people will simply—tragically—not be around anymore. Others, literally and figuratively, will have moved on.
I treasure the past, and I sit on it. It is my foundation, but I have a lot of future to build. I do not have to stay a course just because that is what I have always done. Neither does anyone else.
The core of what I am is a storyteller. Everything I do bends toward that. So although we may not comprehend the vastness of the changes wrought in 2020 for years—decades—to come, I take comfort in the certainty that this one thread continues unbroken—not even challenged. It is in fact the cord that pulls every change in my life behind it.
The earth turns, the axis swings. Here comes the sun again. The story goes on.
