The Obligatory 2019 Blog Post (Patreon)

Well, it’s a new year, so I guess it’s time for a new splurge of indulgent self-examination and vague speculation about the future. Don’t worry, I won’t go so far as to make any resolutions or anything like that, but there are some definite changes in store for 2019 that I want to keep everyone in the loop on.

First, a quick recap: If you remember that looooooooong blog I wrote last year about why everything was taking so long to get done (or better yet, if you valued your time too much to bother reading something that long), I ultimately pinned the blame on me not having fun at conventions the way I used to. For one thing, the novelty of cons has long sense worn off, so I don’t have the same excitement over the things to feed off of like I used to, and and can’t overlook the uglier aspects of that environment as easily as I once could. What’s more, though, the whole convention scene itself isn’t what it used to be. Or more accurately, there isn’t just one “scene” anymore but a few dozen all cramming themselves into the same events. It’s fantastic that once-niche subjects are now accessible to vast swaths of mainstream audiences, but a necessary consequence is that being a fan of those subjects no longer means as much as it used to. The fact that another person also enjoys animation drawn by people of Japanese decent is no longer any guarantee that I’ll have anything remotely in common with that person. It’s like saying “Oh, you watch TV? Me too!” That’s such a vague thing to have “in common” with others that it can apply to people still aren’t remotely compatible with each other. That’s where I am with conventions and fandom in general these days, I find myself surrounded by people who are fans of the same thing I am, yet somehow don’t like a single thing I like, and vice versa. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna go on some kind of old school worshiping “things were so much better in MY day!” rant. Whatever The Kids These Days are into isn’t any stupider than the stupid stuff I’m into, go be stupid over whatever you want. It’s just that spending days in constant interaction with people that I get nothing back from is really exhausting, especially if I’m still operating under the assumption that I’m SUPPOSED to be getting more and more plugged in to this scene. That frustration and exhaustion made it harder to get comics done afterwards, which just resulted in MORE frustration and exhaustion that started causing more delays elsewhere and so the cycle would continue. 

My conclusion at the time was to start pulling back from involvement in the convention scene, still going to the things, obviously, but not letting myself get wrapped up in things that were just going to leave me tired and frustrated in the end. Less volunteering or panel work, fewer cosplay meetups and events, generally spending less time in one-on-one interaction with most people, all that anti-social stuff. And did it work? Well, I’m not sure, because one thing I definitely learned over the course of 2018 was that I’d overlooked a major source of frustration: THE DREADED HOTEL ROOM.

Actually, I need to slap some disclaimers on that, because the point where I finally realized the problem was a convention where I didn’t even HAVE a hotel room: the infamous AWA 2018 where I camped in the van. Obviously, that was a unique situation, and one I entirely brought upon myself, but it still forced me to recognize something important about my congoing in general. See, you all saw how badly delayed the AWA comics were, it was downright embarrassing. But the thing is, I actually got more pages drawn at the con itself than I had in YEARS. Over half the pages were already inked before I even left Georgia. This update SHOULD have been finished an online within a week of me getting back home. And yet, that didn’t happen. Instead, it was weeks before I could even LOOK at those comics for more than a few minutes at a time, let alone get any meaningful work done on them. While I’d been able to shut out the unpleasantness of my conditions well enough as it was happening, as soon as I got home, all I wanted to do was forget about it. By the time I’d put enough emotional distance between myself and that weekend to start making fun of it, Conventional Wisdom was horrendously late, and all my other projects were suffering as a result. 

And then I had a revelation: while the AWA situation may have been unique, these consequences weren’t out of the ordinary at all! This post-convention downer was EXACTLY the thing I said I was trying to avoid! An unpleasant situation that arose during the con had followed me home and interfered with my ability to do the very thing I went to the con for in the first place. I’d been so focused on looking for things that would cause this DURING the convention that I’d horribly underestimated the issue of GETTING there. Every time I got stuck in a room with people I had no reason to be stuck in a room with, every time I was bent out of shape for paying two or three times more than I’d ever think is reasonable for a room, every time I spent weeks getting ulcers over the uncertainty of not knowing if I even COULD find a room, all that stuff was just as unhealthy as any lousy experience I’d ever had at the convention itself. And if I want my convention experience to change, that’s another thing that’s gonna have to change with it.

This weekend I travel up to DC for MAGFest as usual, but after that, I’m done with big out-of-state conventions for a while. At least for the rest of 2019, I’m not going to a single con that would require me to stay at a hotel. If I go, I go for the day then come back home to sleep in my own bed. If I can’t make that commute, I’m staying home. Don’t worry, I won’t be sleeping in the van again (unless somebody buys me one of those mini-RVs for my next birthday), but rooming on-site is officially no longer an option. There was a point when this would have seemed completely ridiculous to me, namely that point when conventions were generally small enough that getting a room was really easy, and I could take for granted that just about everyone I’d potentially room with was more or less the same kind of nerd as I was. Those days are long gone, but part of me has still been acting like that’s the norm for getting to the con, just like I was about how I did things AT the con. If I’m going to change how I do conventions, I need to change EVERYTHING about how I do them.

So what does this mean for the next year’s schedule? Well, to be honest, a lot of the changes have already happened, this is this finalizing them. Any lingering hope of Katsucon or Anime USA returning to the list are officially put to bed, to say nothing of that Dragoncon trip people keep trying to convince me to make, and I’m afraid this also means that Anime Weekend Atlanta is off the queue for the foreseeable future. Animazement is still a go, but again, I’ve already been commuting to that one from home for several years, so this just sets in stone what I was already doing anyway. Basically, Animazement is going to be the new normal rather than the exception.

“But what about Otakon?” I hear you ask “Surely you wouldn’t quit going to the convention where Conventional Wisdom started, would you?” Well… I dunno. That’s really up in the air at the moment. I WAS prepared to make a big, dramatic confirmation that I was quitting Ota, just to show how serious I was about making changes, but now I’m not so sure. Some possibilities sprang up over the holiday season that, if things pan out right, COULD allow me to spend Otakon weekend crashing on a couch and just taking the Metro into DC. If so, this would still technically count as me swearing off hotels, and hopefully ease up on the stress enough to make the trip worth it. But those are the only circumstances under which I’d do Otakon again. I’ve had enough of the Hunger Games scramble to find a room and having to take out a mortgage to pay for it. I had toyed with the idea of looking for a room up in Silver Spring or some other suburb on the Red Line, and just riding in THAT way, but while that could end up being cheaper, it’d only amplify the stress of getting a crew of roommates together. It’s hard enough to find a room’s worth reliable, tolerable people as it is, adding “and also okay with riding the train back and forth from Maryland” to the requirements would just make things even more difficult. The only way Conventional Wisdom is going to get back on track is if I cut down on all hat difficulty and stress, and if there’s no way to do that for Otakon, then Conventional Wisdom just won’t go to Otakon anymore. It sucks, but SOMETHING drastic has to change, and this just might be it.

And before you freak out over all your favorite convention coverage stopping, there IS a good side to all this change. See, the whole reason I got into the habit of attending so many conventions up in DC and elsewhere out of state was because, at the time, there just wasn’t anything else going on in North Carolina. There was Animazement and that was pretty much it. With the way the convention scene has exploded over recent years, though, now there’s a lot of options within driving distance of home… and I’ve never been to most of them, because I kept blowing all my energy and money on these out of state cons. I mean, the comic book shop here in town does a little one day mini-con twice a year, and I’ve never been able to head over there because it’s always either during or right after a bigger convention. I say again, I’ve never been able to attend an event LITERALLY WITHING WALKING DISTANCE OF MY HOME because I was too busy spending hundreds of dollars to go to events several states away. How does THAT make any sense?

There’s also the local cons I HAD attended for a year or so, but dropped because, ironically, I wanted to focus more on the big ones. I justified this decision on the grounds that I wasn’t getting enough material for a full-sized Conventional Wisdom update from the little local Comic Cons, but seeing as how I’m currently on a quest to make updates smaller and less time consuming, this could be exactly what I need. Also, I’d decided that the updates for smaller cons weren’t pulling in as many readers and the big ones, and thus weren’t worth the time and resources I was putting into them.  But the thing is, it was those long, expensive trips to the big cons that made me feel like I needed a bigger return on an update to begin with. If I put less money and energy into getting to cons in general, I won’t feel like I need to get as much OUT of any individual con to be worth it, and a smaller update that pulls in less traffic won’t feel like a disappointment. And, well, let’s be real here, the big updates haven’t been pulling in anywhere near as much traffic as they used to anyway. It’s hardly surprising, between the lack of regular filler comics while I’m working on the big updates and the general lateness of those updates finally happening. What’s the point of spending so much extra to cover a bigger convention if that coverage doesn’t come out until a month after everyone who attended stopped caring?

So that’s the big news for the new year, Conventional Wisdom’s drastic retooling to focus more on the local North Carolina convention scene. Is there anything else to talk about? Well, as always, I’ve got a bunch of side projects and Far Out There things and stuff for Patreon I WANT to do more of, but at this point I think I’ll keep my mouth shut on those until I can actually get the current scheduling problems taken care of. Once it’s clear that I can actually find time to do that other stuff, THEN I’ll start making promises about doing them. One thing I CAN promise you all, though, is… well, it’s another thing that’s actually already happened, it’ll just be happening more. Due to the second half of the AWA update bled over into Far Out There’s Christmas schedule, I put the rest of those comics out one at a time as soon as they were done instead of waiting to post them all in one bunch. I never like the thought of releasing something that isn’t already completed, but now that I’ve actually done it once… yeah, that’s gonna be the new Conventional Wisdom release schedule from now on. Aside from the fact that it’s a lot easier to promote something that updates every day rather than something that only update every few months, it’s just really good for morale to be able to put a comic in front of people as soon as it’s done.  Know a comic will be sitting in my computer where no one can see for weeks while I finish a dozen others just makes it that much harder to get anything done at all. So pay that much closer attention to the various social media outlets for alerts when a new page goes live.

Oh, and seeing as how MAGFest is most definitely an out-of-state convention, I’m sure a lot of you are wondering if I’ll be dropping that from Conventional Wisdom’s rotation as well. And you know what? …that’s not until 2020, so I don’t have to make a decision just yet! HA!