On what may be my last furcon

So, IndyFurCon is this weekend. I ended up going Saturday, getting a one-day pass. Overall, I simply ended up reminded of every reason that being social in the fandom is impossible unless you're already reasonably popular.

I picked up a friend last night and took him with me to the convention; we arrived around 12:30. That was just in time for the fursuit parade, of which I took a couple dozen photos. From there, it was on to the Artists' Alley and Dealers' Den, where I commissioned a couple of things. And then... pretty much nothing. I bumped into a couple people along the way and we chatted briefly, but the time between the parade and dinner was generally so uneventful that I could probably be convinced those four hours didn't actually exist.

Dinner was the one highlight of the day. We had a total of seventeen furs at a local burger place; four of them actually finished the one-pound burger that is the establishment's signature menu item. Conversations were had; contact information was exchanged. Eventually, though, the food was done and everyone made their way back to the hotel.

That's pretty much where the night fell apart. Everyone scattered quickly after we returned. This also included the friend that came with me; he left with a strong implication of doing adult things with someone else at the con. Of the half dozen or so people I'd exchanged information with during dinner, just one bothered sending me a text afterwards and he was clearly too drunk to be of any interest. I briefly got involved in a card game, but that wound down maybe half an hour after I joined in. By then, the dance was in full swing and anyone who was going to attend a room party had already disappeared for the night. I tried unsuccessfully to get other people to join in a game, but to no avail.

While wandering con space, someone bumped into me that I'd rather not have seen. The conversation was rather terse; I told him very directly that I was not going to forgive him for things he'd done to me in the past because he'd shown no intention of apologizing. He kept talking; I offered to take him back to my place out of little more than desperation; when he declined I stopped paying much attention to anything he said. During all this, the friend who I'd given a ride to told me that he wasn't going to be coming home with me after all... this at 11 PM, at which point it was already far too late for me to even attempt finding a room there.

Once he left, I was pulled into a conversation with two other friends who'd been too busy to even give me the time of day prior to that; ultimately I got invited back to their room. Things happened but I get the impression that it was out of pity more than genuine interest, especially as I was shooed out of the room rather abruptly when it became feasible for me to be asked to leave. It was late, sure, but it still came across as one of those people would've rather liked to see me leave an hour earlier than I did.

So, as a result of all this? Everyone else I even slightly care about at the convention is curled up with someone else at the hotel tonight, if not doing considerably more than just snuggling, while I had a half hour drive home. I get to curl up, alone, with nothing more than shattered hopes and empty promises for company. While it was certainly nice to meet a couple of people in the afternoon, it's not worth spending several hours in the evening getting increasingly despondent from being collectively ignored by everyone I'd had even the slightest hope of spending some time with.

I seriously doubt I'm going to be trying to attend a convention again in the future, of any size. If someone explicitly invites me to share a room with them and buys my badge, I might consider it, but even then I'd have to think about it before subjecting myself to little more than an expensive form of social rejection. In the meantime, I'm going to take what amounts to little more than an extended nap in the vain hope of finding someone interested in getting breakfast early tomorrow morning.

Just another rant about nonsense

Today has been one crappy thing after another.

• Started off in a decent mood, which was quickly screwed shortly after arriving at work. I got there with plenty of time to spare, then the late-night office lackey wasted fifteen minutes messing around with my paperwork even after both I and the terminal manager have repeatedly told him that he just needs to hand paperwork to drivers so we can go.
• I get into the truck I had yesterday and discovered that they actually fixed something I wrote up. Unfortunately, I also wrote up the malfunctioning air conditioning and they didn't seem to bother repairing that. It was tolerable until the sun came up, but after that, forget it.
• Despite the delays at the terminal this morning, I made up a surprising amount of time on the road and arrived at my first stop on time, only to find that I was at the end of a long line of trucks at the guard shack. This meant, according to their time stamp by the time I finally got into the facility, I was ten minutes late. Whatever.
• Upon returning after my first run, I was told my second trip had been canceled for some reason. I found this particularly strange, as the trailer for my load had just arrived with the parts for delivery. After almost twenty minutes of moving equipment around and failed attempts to call HQ to confirm this, one of the terminal staff looked it up themselves and - oops - it turns out my trip wasn't canceled. That's another big chunk of time completely wasted due to incompetence.
• On my way to my second trip, the air conditioning crapped out completely; it was more effective to simply leave the windows partially down. This, however, led to my phone overheating and quickly losing charge. By the time I'd arrived at my second stop, it was hot to the touch.
• After my second stop, I got into the truck again and started rolling. My phone crapped out shortly thereafter and the lousy radio antenna couldn't pick up anything. For a good 50 miles, I had nothing to listen to except grumbling to myself.
• I decided to fuel at the earlier of two truck stops available to us this week. From the Interstate, it looked like there were a couple of fuel lanes open... once I got down there, somehow they'd completely filled up and two more trucks were in line before me. Once I got to the fuel island, I found that the pay-at-the-pump system was broken, requiring me to go inside before I could even start filling the truck up.
• After I finished fueling, I got onto the highway again... and ended up JUST behind an oversized load that was causing significant backups. Both lanes were filled with tailgating vehicles doing 15-20 mph under the speed limit. The mess didn't clear up for almost ten miles, as there was a work zone immediately past where that rig exited.
• When I got back to Indianapolis, the terminal manager claims he was asking all drivers to give their keys back. At everywhere else I've ever worked, turning your keys in equates very directly to being fired. I told him as much; he said to turn the keys in anyway and repeated his thinly-veiled excuse. If I don't have a job or a key tomorrow morning it's going to be quite a conscious act of will to not set fire to the place.
• Once home, I found that UPS had attempted to deliver a package that I'd been eagerly waiting for all day. Their website never said it was out for delivery; if I had any idea when it might arrive I'd have asked someone else to sign for it. I called UPS and got told the local terminal would call me back "within an hour" to arrange for me to pick it up there. So, instead of getting a shower and trying to feel slightly better, I was left waiting for a phone call. Note that my cell phone is still screwed up from earlier, so, obviously, it never rang. They left me a message helpfully telling me that I could pick it up between 6 and 8. That might be nice if I didn't have an appointment with my hair stylist at 6, which I'm now going to be late for thanks to waiting on that phone call.

So, as a result of all this, I'm hot, sweaty, have a potentially broken cell phone, may or may not be able to pick up an order from Amazon that I'd been eagerly waiting for, will be late for the appointment to get my hair done, probably won't get dinner in a timely manner this evening, and definitely won't be getting anywhere near eight hours of sleep by the time everything is done. Now to go deal with rush hour traffic as I try to make it through one of the most congested parts of Indianapolis.