May gray

So I had scheduled a newsletter announcing the return of my event - with the vaccine-only requirement - for Saturday, and had completely forgotten that I’d done that until a flood of emails took over my inbox Saturday morning. 

Now, I have been “putting on my mental armor” ever since I made the decision to try to hold the event this year, knowing it was going to be difficult on every level imaginable: a) general uncertainty and changing conditions, b) being rusty not having done an event in two years, c) the call for racial justice meaning letting some white people go to hire more black people, and changing some wording and ways we do things, d) safety concerns around covid in general, e) having to throw it together in just a few months and f) dealing with crazy right wing nuts who are now telling on themselves since they’re no longer in power. But somehow I was still not prepared for the level of vitriol shoved at me. I had rather naively thought that, since I had mentioned it so many times online that we would “most likely” be vaccine-only that people would be prepared for this...but they weren’t. It also shows how out of touch people are that they would think it’s in any way advisable to run a giant indoor event with people breathing heavily in each other’s faces for hours at a time with zero covid restrictions, when even Disneyland (outdoors) and other large institutions have had to alter their operations...? Anyway. I had a lot of support, but I also had one well-known troll give me the finger and tell me to shove it (I was shocked this miscreant was on my email list - I called him a reprehensible piece of shit and removed him immediately, to which he then told me to “sit on it and rotate, hun”), another troll tell me I was sheep in an email and also attack me on my FB page (did you know you can ban people from interacting with your business page? I do now!), another malignant cunt tell me she hopes someone sues me for violating people’s civil rights (also now banned), and another woman passive-aggressively tell me in an email that “people have been prosecuted for this” (requiring vaccines - entirely not true) and I should allow everyone in with just a test (because we all see how well that worked out at that White House event that time) to “be more inclusive”. I pretty much went off on her (politely but firmly) and she backpedaled and apologized today. I’ve also told people they were cruel and evil. Several people said they wouldn’t be attending because of the policy and I immediately removed them from my mailing list. But far, far more said they would only have attended with this policy, so there you go.

I mean obviously I don’t give a shit about these shitty people - they can all catch it and die, for all I care; they’re pretty much asking for it with their foolishness. But let’s just say a day spent trading expletives and insults with crazy people is not fun for me. It’s actually extremely upsetting and deflating. 

Do I regret agreeing to put on this event? Of course not. But I was just reminded of what a monumental pain in the ass it is - something I’ve been relieved of the last year - and how much the next four months of my life are going to suck. Even in the best of times this event is full of stress. This year is just going to be about a thousand times worse because of people’s mental illnesses and/or stupidity.

In other news, we met with the contractor yesterday out at our place, and he seems a lot less crazy in person (how I hate texting). I think we’ve come to an agreement (he doesn’t really understand why we want things so rustic but he’ll do what we want, and thankfully the BF fully supports me in this) and he may even be able to start in mid-June. So that’s a little happy lump of sugar for me amidst all this bitterness.