Official

After days of agony waiting for word, the hotel gave me the go ahead last night to cancel, and they will, once again, waive my $200,000 cancellation fee. I knew they probably would, but not hearing anything for four days was stressful. I sent an official letter today, citing the public health concern and expressing my wish to have a long and mutually beneficial relationship in the future.

I was going to hold off on publicly announcing until Sunday night or Monday so I could have one last weekend of peace...but my plans all got canceled today, so I’m stuck at home, which is the perfect time to do all of the admin work involved - contact the 700 remaining attendees, make social media announcements, update the website, manage messages. I’m going to hide from my email for the weekend, though. That’s Monday morning stuff. 

I’m sure I’ll get some naysayers but mostly people have applauded my move, which reminds me that, even though I am genuinely canceling out of concern for the community, making this sacrifice definitely builds trust for me and my event going forward, which is a good thing. I was really scared of appearing reckless or selfish in continuing on in the face of mounting evidence against having an event, and now I don’t have to be concerned with that. I guess this is what you call leadership. And I (hopefully) will never know the terror of creating a super spreader event. Phew. 

I took the boys for their pre-school start coronavirus tests today. Poor kids. They will have to endure this every week. They are such troopers. I should make us some chocolate ice cream today.