Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Recovery mode

Now that I’m back from RWA Nationals in Washington D.C., I’m in full recovery mode. I’m sure the 2000 other women who attended are feeling much the same thing. If you’ve never attended a conference, and especially a conference of this size, you’re probably wondering just what recovery mode entails so I’m going to share some insights with you.

*The first few nights you’re home, you wonder how you’re going to get to sleep without rehashing the entire day with your 6 roommates.

*At home, you feel guilty about having chips for breakfast and cheetos at 2am. At conference, that’s totally normal, especially since you might not otherwise get a chance to eat in your busy schedule.

*Monday morning you’ve got so much information, faces, facts, and memories stored in your brain from the past week that you can only stare apathetically at your email/notes/edits/boss because you simply cannot process one more thing. You’re fairly sure your brain is much like Kelly Bundy’s and each new thing you learned has pushed out something else.

*There will be no more random sightings of Nora Roberts’ shoes to give you an adrenaline boost to get through the day. You’ll have to be try to get the same effect from your five year old’s Twinkle Toes.

*While your feet are weeping in gratitude that you’ve gone back to bare feet and flip flops, your inner diva finds herself a little sad that you’re packing away the rockin’ heels and party dresses. But you don’t suppose daycare would be too impressed if you showed up in that slinky, cleavage revealing dress with five-inch heels.

*You sort through all the business cards you acquired, desperately trying to put faces to each name and hoping you didn’t make a total fool of yourself when you rode up the elevator with that agent/editor/author.

*As you look through all of the new books you acquired at the Literacy and publisher signings, you wonder what you were thinking in grabbing them all. You just took a week off to attend RWA, you’re not going to have time to read until 2010 at least.

*Finally, despite being exhausted, having a sore throat from all the talking, having blisters, feeling brain dead, not knowing just where to start to get reintegrated into the real world, despite all the packing, the preparation, the nerves, the sleepless nights, early mornings and massive amounts of caffeine needed to get through the week, you realize it was all worth it for the moments of joy, glee, companionship, memories and tears and you can’t wait to do it again next year.