Grinding...
It's been two days since I got back, and I'm still in that strange in-between space where GenCon hasn't quite let go of me but the daily grind has already fully reasserted its claim. The first day back is never really a day off, even when you tell yourself it will be. There's laundry that smells like a convention hall, a stack of new games to find shelf space for, and an inbox that apparently did not know I was busy having a grand time. By the second day the rhythm starts creeping back in, meetings and emails and the small ordinary tasks that make up most of a life, and the loud, bright week in Indianapolis starts to feel like something I read about rather than something I lived four days ago.
I don't think winding down is really about missing the convention itself, though I do miss it. It's more that GenCon runs at a different frequency than regular life, everything closer together, every hour accounted for by something you actually chose, and coming home means retuning yourself back down to the slower, quieter frequency of ordinary days. That retuning takes longer than the drive home does.
What's been helping, honestly, is that I've got something to sink back into. Between updating the websites, I've also been quietly chipping away at a secret project I'm not ready to talk about yet, and the proof of concept has been coming together nicely. No it is not a game or anything quite that cool. But there's a specific kind of satisfaction in watching an idea that existed only in my head on the drive home, start to hold its own shape, especially right after a week spent surrounded by other people's finished, polished creations. It's a good reminder that everything in that Dealer Hall started exactly where this thing is now, as a rough idea somebody decided to keep pushing on.
So that's where I am. Half still standing in the exhibit hall, half already back at the desk, and quietly excited about a thing I can't quite show anyone yet.
By Norman, BigGame, BGG Tabletop. Photography. Philosophy. The spaces where they all live.
