Something else about the recent Seattle trip: it was a six-day, five-night trip, and the entire thing was work with one exception — Chloe came up to do a panel on the Saturday night, and so I basically took that night off (after appearing on said panel; it was fun) to have dinner and relax and not think about work, and then went straight back into it on the Sunday morning… and that all proved to be surprisingly odd.
Not the night off or the dinner or any of that; that was all great. But I found myself having trouble kicking back into Work Brain after that brief break, and it felt more like starting over than jumping back in after a short interlude. Oddly enough, I’d experienced this before, last year, when family visited during my time working PAX West; again, I took a break and then went back into it, except… well, getting back into it felt curiously hesitant and awkward at first then, as well.
It led me to think about how, when I’m on a work trip like these ones, it’s very much this kind of flow state mentality where I leave everything else behind and just surrender to the process wherever it goes. That flow state needs a kind of air lock, though, and that’s the prep days before the shows that we get looped into: traveling, sure, but then the process of meeting up with your team and checking in with them, or for many of the shows, doing a walk-through of the convention center a day ahead to see all the particular features that show. (Yes, we’re very thorough; you’re welcome.)
Part of it is also, I think, the accidental preparation of the solitude of the hotel room each night before and the morning of, and the mental space to check off the tick boxes of things you were meant to do or still have to do, from “actual work” to, honestly, remembering to eat and drink and shower and iron clothes and whatever. (Ironing my clothes is a weird but necessary part of my mental morning routine before a day at a convention.) It’s all part of the flow state, and I think a more necessary part than I believed. All of it is maintenance for the whoever I become on those trips, and when the reality of my everyday life sneaks in, that maintenance and that entire Work Me wobbles, just for a second.