After COVID
It was a sad day at my house when the Design Principles and Practices Conference in Brooklyn was postponed due to COVID-19. I had worked very hard on my poster for presentation there, which was supposed to take place on March 17.
I had worked right up until the last minute, really. I turned the file in to UW Poster Services about 10am Pacific Time on Monday March 9, 2020. The conference was cancelled a couple of hours later.
The trip I had planned included first traveling to Montreal for the Intentional Costumer’s Guild. I had won a membership as part of my prize at “WorldCon” in Dublin the previous August. Well, Montreal said they were going forward, based on conditions there. I changed my tickets. I was going to go and have a great time.
On March 10th, at my doctor’s insistence I saw a pulmonologist for a persistent cough that kept hanging around after my influenza was over. After reading my CT scan he told me I should not go, for everyone’s sake. I had an especially nasty type of pneumonia. I could be contagious, but they would not know for several days. It was a really bad idea. I planned and packed, but in the end I cancelled my tickets Wednesday night. On Thursday, just as I would have arrived at the hotel in Montreal, that conference was cancelled as well. I felt like the luckiest unlucky person in the world.
My winter illness had set me way back on refinishing Mielificent in time to enter it in the 2020 New Zealand World of Wearable Art Exhibition (due in late March). I worked on it sporadically, but not enough to finish it on time. The exhibition, a sort of half-fashion show, half-circus extravaganza, takes place annually in September. I visited their web site then, only to discover they had cancelled in late March, right at the due date. Interestingly the 2020 World Science Fiction Convention took place live in person (and remotely/virtually), in Wellington, in August of 2020.
All this contributes to my continuing feeling of being on pause (except at work, which is busier than before). And to my feeling of weird luck. But still I have this opportunity to share my work with you, as different as it is from what I expected.