I've been home from Dragon*Con for a lit­tle more than a week now, and I'm still try­ing to fig­ure out how to describe this year. Like so many things, it was a hodge-podge of awe­some and infuriating.

The 'con is many things to many peo­ple. To me, it rep­re­sents more of a fam­ily reunion than any­thing else. I've always been an "out­sider" in that I live states away from some of the best peo­ple I've come to know over the last decade.

Jake and I used to make the trip south­east sev­eral times a year for gath­er­ings and events to share with our south­ern brethren. Through a com­bi­na­tion of life and pri­or­ity changes for a num­ber of peo­ple, this no longer hap­pens nearly as often as we'd like, so we tend to seize the con­ven­tion as the time when we catch up, drink, and be merry with friends — a fam­ily of choice, really — that we're lucky to see once a year, albeit at an event that draws upwards of 40,000 peo­ple who are oth­er­wise unin­vited to our lit­tle soiree.

Some high­lights of the week for me …

Jeremy (finally) decided to make an hon­est woman out of Vickie and pro­posed at 'con. Con­grats, you crazy kids!

My friends Brian, Stephen, Crispy and Patrick won a Par­sec Award — and deservedly so — for their pod­cast, WhatThe­Cast!

Work­ing the stage for DJ Spider's rave set in the Mar­riott Atrium ball­room was pretty cool, too.

And of course, what's becom­ing the annual Mas­quer­ade post-game party in the bow­els of the Hyatt.

But all in all, what I trea­sure most is the cama­raderie forged with peo­ple that I only get a chance to see once a year, in one of the most stress­ful, fun, scary, amaz­ing envi­ron­ments imag­in­able. It's too much, it's never enough — all at the same time. We fight some­times, we yell some­times, but at the end of the day we're family.

* * *

Over the last few years, my 'con expe­ri­ence never really ended. In the months lead­ing up to each year's con­ven­tion and for weeks there­after, I was com­mit­ted to run­ning our HR oper­a­tions: get­ting new staffers on-boarded into our var­i­ous sys­tems, send­ing out com­mu­ni­ca­tions, coor­di­nat­ing lists and every­thing that goes with it. After Dragon*Con 2010, I was unable to do this because my real-life job had a stran­gle­hold on my time, and so work was reap­por­tioned to oth­ers who had more time to devote to the job. There was no other choice at the time, really; work had to get done and it couldn't wait for me to find a free moment.

Ini­tially, I found this free­ing. I'd been so burned out with not hav­ing any real off-season for myself that I rel­ished not hav­ing to do every­thing, no longer guilty that I couldn't devote the time that I would have if other things hadn't taken prece­dence. Going into this year's 'con, I was wor­ried that the con­se­quence of this would lead to my being a tad unpre­pared when I arrived for load-in on the Thurs­day of 'con weekend.

In a way, this is what hap­pened. Hav­ing to play catch up in a mad­den­ing envi­ron­ment isn't always prefer­able, but at dragon*con it's gen­er­ally the only option. This wasn't wholly bad, how­ever — not by a long shot. I arrived on-site fresh and relaxed and I was able to keep a cool head through­out the 'con, which ulti­mately trans­lated to a bet­ter expe­ri­ence than I may have had otherwise.

Things are always done best in mod­er­a­tion, how­ever. In ret­ro­spect, I feel that I may have been a lit­tle too removed from the process that hap­pens pre-con. So now the trick is to learn how to take hold of a fair amount of work that won't result in burnout before I make it on-site next year. I think I'm more than capa­ble of doing this.

We only have five days every year to make our mark at dragon*con. 2012 will be my tenth year on staff since Amy brought me into the wacky fam­ily that's known sim­ply as TechOps. I intend to make it my best.

Had I not been some­what forced to attend dragon*con in 2003 for work, I would never have met such won­der­ful peo­ple that I count as friends — no mat­ter where they live — and oth­ers whom are fam­ily. With­out them, my life would cer­tainly be dif­fer­ent in ways that I'd rather not com­pre­hend. These peo­ple — y'all know who you are — are what make me come back every year want­ing more.

Thanks for let­ting me be a part of your world, if only for a few days each year.

Flickr: My fotos from Dragon*Con 2011