I did it! Sort of. Last weekend I swallowed my social anxiety and forced myself to enter a geeky convention setting for the first time ever. It wasn’t the biggest event of all-time, and I wasn’t there for long, but it was an alright toe-dipping into Geequinox 2023, I suppose!
What is this Geequinox 2023 thing?
According to the official website, Geequinox is a yearly spring convention held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Canadian winters suck (trust me) so I think it’s cute the creator, PigMonkey Andrew Dorfman, has framed the event as geeks coming out of hibernation.
The convention takes place over two days and is focused around gaming, cosplay, comics, and art. I’ve loved video games since forever so this seemed like a good target for my social improvement mission.
My personal XP at the event
I don’t know how I made it into my mid-thirties with ZERO social skills and almost no offline connections, but here I am. The vast majority of my friendships are online-only, and it has been that way since I was a teenager. I’ve finally accepted this isn’t good for my mental health. I need real human connections IRL or my monkey brain will continue to feel lonely. Alas! Making friends with strangers as an adult isn’t exactly easy for a normal social person, let alone me.
It was late in the day Saturday by the time I got my solo introverted butt over there. I was also able to get in without showing anyone my ticket (which I thought was weird). I just wandered the show floor for a bit since there was nothing else I was interested in going on at the time.
Unfortunately, most of the event-goers there were meshed firmly into the groups they came with and were way younger than I am. No opportunity to make a human friend was found. Sigh.
I did chat with a couple of the vendors and enjoyed seeing all the wonderful geeky art. People are truly talented!
I came, I saw, I quickly left. But at least I went to the thing! Small steps and all that.
Photo Gallery
Sources: Header image by Goashape on Unsplash. Event photos taken by Solarayo (she acutally went somewhere!!).
It’s never easy trying put yourself out there and find irl friends, I should know 😅
As someone who fairly recently also attended their first in person event and did manage to meet some cool people the Later Levels of Kim & Pete, also Promo and some others I forget the names of cos my memory is like a bucket with no bottom in it and also a thousand drilled holes in all sides 😂. Anywho I forget where I was going with this, but good luck with your quest and should this blog stand the test of time I’ll likely return 😁