When I work a comic convention, it puts me in a particular mindset that’s difficult to explain; the best (or, at least, easiest for other people to understand) way to describe it is that I hyperfocus on the work at the expense of nearly everything else: I go where the work demands, I work until it’s over, and that becomes my primary focus over, basically, everything else. It’s as if my brain goes, oh, this is a work trip? Okay, so we’re all about the work and that’s it.
From an employer point of view, that probably sounds like a dream, but on a practical level, it’s not ideal; without fail, my sleep cycle gets screwy because all of a sudden I’m sleeping odd hours without meaning to — waking up earlier than I’d like because my subconscious feels as if there’s something I should be alert for and working on — and my diet similarly goes to shit, because I put off meals until my body is yelling at me to eat, because I tell myself that I can eat after this next thing, and there’s always a next thing. My hyperfocus is so narrow that the necessities unfortunately drop off a little.
I’m sharing this because, this past weekend, I’ve been doing something new: working a convention from home. On the one hand, that’s not entirely new because I’ve reported on conventions I’ve not been at before in a more limited capacity, but this time, it was a more intense, more intentional effort: I was editing and acting as back-up writer for the team at Chicago’s C2E2 all weekend, and tasked with a bunch of things that made it very much a “working the con for real, just from somewhere else” experience… and I found that, despite being home, my body and head went into exactly the same routine, and suddenly I’m working 12 hour days and not eating enough and only sleeping 6 hours a night at most despite trying otherwise.
I’m sure this is a habit I have to break, somehow; it’s not good to feel as tired as this even while working from home for a three-day stretch, nor is it particularly good to decompress my brain by watching Anyone But You or No Hard Feelings while collapsed on a couch because, sure, glossy romantic comedies feel like a good idea right now over anything more intellectually stimulating. (Reading, curiously enough, goes by the wayside for anything other than work during cons; one day, I’ll work out why. That said, No Hard Feelings was actually great…?) Objectively, this is not a “good time,” and yet…
I don’t know, maybe this is Stockholm Syndrome talking (Con-home Syndrome, in this case, for those who love puns?), but there’s something oddly reassuring to me that the experience transferred like this. It reaffirms that it’s conventions that do this to me, not travel, per se; that it’s hyperfocus because of work, and not an unease about being unmoored away from traditional comforts.
As a workaholic, I feel that’s easier to deal with, more acceptable, than the idea that I lose all reality when I travel, considering almost all of my travel in recent years — by which I mean the last decade, shockingly — has been related to work in some way or another. Having such a “con” experience while home is, in its own sick way, a sign that if I ever manage to have a vacation again, it might not be such a meandering mess.
There’s something to be said about accentuating the positive, I think to myself as I also ponder how tired I am.
