Sasquan Redux

I'm still thinking about the big convention in Spokane.

For some reason I've gone to fewer cons in the last few years than previously, so I'm a bit out of touch and out of practice.  It doesn't help that most of the year I'm a quasi-hermit.  Well, I always have been, with an excruciating time out to teach college English.  That got better when they let me teach composition as "Wisconsin Gothic"  with Wisconsin Death Trip as a reader, but still ....  

Anyway, by the third day of Sasquan I was having trouble even speaking, and not through larengitis.

Then came the kaffeeklash, where I learned that I've become something of a catch-phrase at a blog call File 770.  That was the first I'd heard of it.  Someone present reported that I was amused with this belated (from the 1980's) acclaim.  More like startled.  That in turn made me think about my overall ambitions.

Here we come to a delicate balancing act.  Somewhere in the distant past, I decided to keep fantasy and reality strictly apart.  I have never day-dreamed about myself, presumably to avoid false expectations.  I try not to think about awards or money or fame.  Repeat: try.  Those things are out of my control.  At the same time I take what I do very seriously.  My whole life has been structured around writing this particular fantasy.  And professionally I've been slapped in the face many times.  Perhaps there's a virture in sheer, bull-headed determination.   As a result, though, I don't know if this life-long obsession is a potential triumph over adversity or a personal disaster.  Whichever, the course was set long ago.  Now it only remains for me to see it through.