As I’m writing this, I’m two days out from the end of Gen Con 2024, and I just saw the following post in the Fans of Gen Con Facebook group:
I need a term for the way I’m feeling being back at home and work and real life today. Is “AfterCon Blues” a thing? 🥺🥺
“AfterCon Blues”, or what I often call “post-event drop”, is very much a thing. You spend 2-4 days among a bunch of like-minded people, all excited about a specific thing – gaming, anime, LARPing, or something else you enjoy. You’re super excited about everything going on. You end up chatting with a lot of people you’ve never met before, maybe even make some new friends in the process. You go to lots of fun events, and maybe don’t get quite as much food/water/sleep as you usually do because you’re so very focused on all the fun that’s happening. You probably spend a little too much money on all sorts of cool goodies you’ve been wanting to buy for a while. Then the event ends, you go home, and it’s back to your normal day-to-day life: work, chores, pets who missed you very much while you were gone. You’re happy to be back at home in your own bed, but you miss the excitement of the event you just got back from, and you feel a little depressed. (Maybe even more than a little.) What do you do?
Well, here’s The Crafty Nerd’s guide to wrangling the post-event blues, based on my own personal experiences. Not everything here may apply to everyone, but hopefully at least some of it will be helpful to folks who are coming off of a convention, LARP weekend, or other event and are feeling a bit of that post-event drop.
Take care of yourself physically.
This is probably the most important thing to keep in mind. You may have been pushing your limits over the past few days, and likely didn’t feel it because of all that adrenaline and excitement fueling you during the event. However, I bet you’re feeling it now – you might be sore from walking many, many more miles than you usually do during a given day, and extra tired from not getting quite enough sleep. Chances are you might even be fighting off an impending case of the dreaded “con crud” – or, in other words, whatever virus was running rampant through the crowds at the event. (These days, it’s likely covid instead of your standard cold.)
Because of all of that, it’s important to take care of yourself physically when you get home. Take a day off work after the event to give yourself time to recover. Get to bed early if you can, or sleep in late the next day to help catch up on that sleep debt. Drink plenty of water or electrolytes to help yourself re-hydrate. And if you think you’re getting sick, make sure to take some extra time to recuperate if you can. Stay hydrated, get extra rest, and test yourself for covid to see if that’s what you’re dealing with or if it’s just a regular garden variety cold.
For me, I know that when I push myself extra hard, I’m likely to experience some bad burnout after an event like Gen Con, so I make sure to take a day off work afterwards and try to be extra gentle with myself. I typically let myself sleep in as late as I need to, and make sure to drink extra water to help me rehydrate because I know I’m terrible at staying hydrated well at big events. If I think I’ll have the energy to drag myself out of the house on my recovery day, I may even schedule a massage to help loosen up those angry muscles I’ve overused by walking 20+ miles while carrying a heavy backpack over the course of four days. I also make sure to eat a little bit more than usual once I get home to help make up for the fact that I’ve burned way more calories than my body’s used to burning.
Take care of yourself emotionally.
Post-event depression sucks. You’ve just come back from a great event – but you wish it were longer or happened more frequently. You may have seen friends you only get to see during this event, and you miss them already. You don’t want to go back to work, you just want to have another day of that awesome event.
Or, instead of post-event depression, you’re experiencing a post-event meltdown. You’ve completely drained your social batteries and are so overwhelmed that you just want to melt down and cry. It’s good to be home, but you did so much over the past few days and you just can’t anymore.
Or you’re dealing with both, which is a special kind of post-event miserableness that I end up experiencing pretty regularly. It sucks a lot. 😅 Whatever you’re going through, it’s important to take care of yourself emotionally, too. What does that entail, though? It’s different for everyone – for example, it might help some people to spend some time with friends and be social, while for others you might need some quiet alone time with your pets and some comforting TV shows. Think about what helps you when you’re struggling, and try and do that to help beat the post-event depression or mitigate the meltdown.
When it comes to taking care of myself emotionally, I tend to hang out in the online social groups focused on the event to help keep the excitement alive a little longer – with Gen Con, I spend a lot of time in the Fans of Gen Con group, and after a LARP event I’ll be more active on the group’s Discord server. Even when I’m feeling overwhelmed, interacting with people online doesn’t drain my social batteries nearly as much as in-person interaction, so this way I can still stay connected to folks without adding extra stress to my already worn-out self. If I’m overwhelmed as heck – which I usually am after an event like Gen Con – I need that alone time, so I make sure I’ve got time to decompress after the event. This year, my post-Gen Con decompression time involved throwing on some Star Trek, snuggling with Hannah, and occasionally poking through the goodies I got at the con. (And crying a little, because sometimes I just need a good cry to release some of that emotional pressure, so to speak.)
Find what works best for you, and make a note of it for next time.
Again, not everything I suggested here will apply to everyone. A lot of this is based on my own experiences, which are admittedly different than most folks due to being neurodiverse. However, maybe some of these suggestions will help, and might give you a starting point to figure out what will help you fight off the post-event blues. And when you do figure out what helps you the most, make a note of it for the next time an event comes around – this way, you’ll be prepared to take care of yourself should you start feeling a little depressed or rough after you get home from the next big convention or LARP game.