If you just said no, I honestly can’t blame you. If you were me and I was you and you hadn’t updated this blog thingy in more than 2 weeks, I would have long-moved on to other, more exciting blog-thingys.

But since you’ve stayed on, thanks so much! So, how are you? Me, I’m all right.

This post has been in the works for exactly one week now, since last Monday and my convention duties finished and I returned to the world of the living. But as usual, real life intervened and then my computer got taken away for battery-induced stress, so this post has been delayed even more than usual.

I honestly can’t believe that the convention is over, and that more than a week has passed by since it began. Remember how I couldn’t imagine what things would be like after the convention? How I couldn’t imagine life after it? Well, somehow it’s managed to move on, but not without a few tears and nostalgic sighs from me and my fellow-volunteers.

To sum the four months and three days into one word, it was AMAZING. At times, I couldn’t imagine everything falling into place and happening, but it somehow did. At times, I wanted to crawl into a hole and cry and cry, which I did. At times, I just wanted it to be over, but when it was, I was sad.

Last weekend was like running a marathon for me, while juggling flaming knives, while riding a unicycle. (How’s that for some imagery?) I’ve already mentioned that I love being busy and feeling stressed out, but this took it to a whole other level. It was funny (or now it seems funny), but I’d be dealing with one crisis at any given time, when ten others would crop up and need my immediate attention. I was running around the whole weekend in this kind of mad craze that I’m sort of bored without it.

That’s not to say that it was all fun and a laugh. There were meltdowns, there were tears, there were harsh words, and sleepless nights all around.

Speaking of sleepless nights, I just want to proudly confess that I pulled my first all-nighter! And yes, I’m serious; I’ve never pulled an all-nighter before. Not in high school or in university. That’s just not how I function. And the whole world should be glad, since I’m not the nicest when I haven’t slept well.

But for some weird reason, my body just ran with it. Usually when I haven’t slept properly, my eyes start closing and I start feeling dizzy with the need to sleep. But not this time. I think it was the adrenaline, but I just kept plowing through, solving crisis after crisis. Now that I survived a string of all-nighters, I’ll be able to tell my future children about something other than my obsessive compulsiveness with organization and punctuality. ^_^

The best part of the convention though were all the people, old and new, that I met. Some of them I felt like I’d known my whole life, even though I’d only met them hours before, and others became solid sources of support and comfort. Some people, I’d known before the convention, like my good friend Zainab G. We were friends from school and we hung out a lot too, but when the stress of the planning escalated and things got heated, we grew even closer, and that’s something I’m so grateful for.

I guess stress can either cause tension or increase love, and for me, it just increased the love I had for my team members and created bonds between us that wouldn’t have been possible in regular situations. I know this because I take awhile to warm up to people (and by ‘awhile’, I mean it can take me months), so this was an amazing experience.

When it was over, I felt like I was emerging from some sort of trance. I hadn’t had access to internet for the four days I had been at the convention, so I had no idea what had happened in the world in those four days. I barely saw my family, even though they were attending the convention, or breathed fresh air. On Monday, when my brothers came to pick me up, I commented on how nice the weather was, and my brother was like, “Uhhh, it was nice all weekend.” But I had no idea, since I barely stepped outside!

Writing this now, a week on the date I came home from the hotel, seems weird. Sometimes it feels like the whole weekend was a dream, as I ask myself and my fellow volunteers, “Did we actually do that? Did we actually plan a convention that was attended by more than a thousand people?” It’s hard to believe that the answer is yes.

So what’s next? My fellow coordinators and I are already working on next year’s convention! Burt we’re trying to take it slow, to give ourselves some time to recover.

This whole week I’ve been at work, since I’ve been picking up extra shifts here and there since I had booked over the four days of the convention. I’m also spending more time with my family, since I was practically ignoring them in the few weeks before the convention. This weekend, my mom and I watched three episodes pf Downton Abbey, the DVD set which I bought for her for mother’s day. And it felt so nice to just lie on the couch, with nothing due or pending.

Well…maybe that’s not true. I’ve got so much work piled up, since I’ve been neglecting everything in the past weeks, that that I need to catch up on, like for example, ahem, that book.

Speaking of that ‘book’, I am unfortunately woefully behind. 🙁 And because my computer’s off to get repaired, I can’t jump back into it, like I had imagined I would, since I’m a creature of habit and I wouldn’t be able to write on any other machine. Silly, I know, but there you have it.

I can also wholeheartedly throw myself into vacation planning! Some of might remember my over-enthusiastic announcement about this impending vacation, several weeks ago and all thought I was leaving in April. I wasn’t. I’m leaving at the end of June, less than one month from today, and can now plan to my heart’s content, without anyone to tell me to ‘calm down’. Ahem.

For books, I haven’t been reading as much, but that’s not because I’ve been busy, since I physically can’t sleep until I read something, no matter how tired I am, but because everything I’ve been reading has been a dud. I’ve abandoned a few books in the past few weeks, which I hate doing, but they just weren’t keeping my attention. I’ll try to do a post tomorrow on a bunch of them, a set of mini reviews.

Anyway, this post is kind of becoming a ramble now, but I wanted to do a post-convention one, to catch you all up. That is if any of you are still left 😛

Thanks so much for your patience, sweet comments, and always, thanks for reading,

Ikhlas