Struggling to decide about Minicon
Apr. 8th, 2009 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrI am giving serious consideration to not going to Minicon this year.
I always bitch about money this time of year--the February - April period is always a perfect storm in my household of short paychecks and higher expenses. Not expenses left over from the holiday, mind you--we always fund that as we go each year. But Rob's attorney dues come due this time of year each year (and whoa, boy, just try to pay that stiff fee out of unemployment). Yet I have always gone to Minicon and eventually gotten over my grouch and had a good time.
This year, for the first time, I really feel compelled to skip. How can I justify paying the registration fee, when we are struggling so hard? And the cost of eating out? I don't plan to participate in programming anyway. They made it clear I'd be welcome to do so, but this spring's depression made me not followup on their overtures, and I'm not writing fiction for publication anymore, and I just didn't want to sit up there on panels and feel all that awful I'm-not-writing-anymore crap. There are some things I plan to do with my money this spring that I genuinely place at a higher priority.
The thing is, Rob and the girls are determined to go. The girls are so desperate to go that they've offered to pay for one night in the hotel with their own money.
So it's clear that if I bite the bullet and do what I think is the responsible, fiscally prudent thing, I'll be doing it by myself. The rest of the family will go off to have fun at Minicon and I'll be sitting at home alone.
I'm not asking anyone to solve this for me. I mean it.
I'm just saying that this sucks.
What I did today to make the world a better place: participated in a meeting at my law firm to brainstorm the firm's direction in pursuing pro bono opportunities.
I always bitch about money this time of year--the February - April period is always a perfect storm in my household of short paychecks and higher expenses. Not expenses left over from the holiday, mind you--we always fund that as we go each year. But Rob's attorney dues come due this time of year each year (and whoa, boy, just try to pay that stiff fee out of unemployment). Yet I have always gone to Minicon and eventually gotten over my grouch and had a good time.
This year, for the first time, I really feel compelled to skip. How can I justify paying the registration fee, when we are struggling so hard? And the cost of eating out? I don't plan to participate in programming anyway. They made it clear I'd be welcome to do so, but this spring's depression made me not followup on their overtures, and I'm not writing fiction for publication anymore, and I just didn't want to sit up there on panels and feel all that awful I'm-not-writing-anymore crap. There are some things I plan to do with my money this spring that I genuinely place at a higher priority.
The thing is, Rob and the girls are determined to go. The girls are so desperate to go that they've offered to pay for one night in the hotel with their own money.
So it's clear that if I bite the bullet and do what I think is the responsible, fiscally prudent thing, I'll be doing it by myself. The rest of the family will go off to have fun at Minicon and I'll be sitting at home alone.
I'm not asking anyone to solve this for me. I mean it.
I'm just saying that this sucks.
What I did today to make the world a better place: participated in a meeting at my law firm to brainstorm the firm's direction in pursuing pro bono opportunities.