Writing & Reconnection: May (ConFuzzled edition)

I really don’t have much to preamble this month, so let’s get right into it.

Year of Writing

This has been a somewhat surprisingly productive month for writing, the headline piece being a rather important blog post about neurodivergence and coming to learn and come to terms with it. This post was originally intended to be far, far longer, but

The about section of the website got a mild sprucing up too, adding a new section about neurodivergence and anxiety, to update some of the information about non-human identity, and to add a new fursona to the furry page.

Yup, I have a second fursona now. This is Ash, a fictional alien-hybrid shapeshifting species known as amphimorpho.

She has taken up the majority of my fiction writing effort over the last month, working out details of her character and her backstory. Her experiences with dysphoria and relationship to being human (or rather, formerly human) are pretty much the same as my own, and it’s kinda weird I’d never developed a character that I could express those feelings through sooner.

Year of Reconnection

The headline event of the month has, naturally, been ConFuzzled. It’s not my first furry convention, but as my first in thirteen years, going in still felt like quite a daunting experience.

I was riddled with little anxieties in the days leading up to it: How would folks I hadn’t seen for over a decade respond? Would they even remember me? Would I be able to persist in awkward small talk? Would I struggle to be in such crowded spaces for nearly a week?

I needn’t have worried.

There’s a certain kind of magic that happens when a bunch of introverted, socially awkward, neurodivergent furries are in one place: it becomes a real “if everyone’s super, no one is” kinda situation. People are more relaxed, more forgiving of awkward silences, and happier to discuss things that they’d normally be more guarded about. There’s an intrinsic sense of camaraderie and trust that—for better or for worse—is assumed rather than earned.

I spoke to so many people. Folks I hadn’t seen since my last convention in 2010; folks I hadn’t seen for six years; folks I hadn’t seen for a few weeks; folks who had only ever been a username on a screen; folks I had never met or heard of before in my life. I spoke to 'em all (almost) entirely without hesitation. I did suffer some audio processing problems which, on a couple of occasions, led me to just blank folks (sorry!) but it otherwise went quite well, I think.

Honestly, during my hiatus from fandom activity (somewhat between 2010 and 2021, more distinctly so between 2012 and 2018) I had forgotten that such camaraderie really existed. Even in the last couple of years, as I’ve worked my way back into the local furry scene, I’ve remained somewhat guarded and distant. Maybe I need to lower those barriers a little more.

The convention did leave me feeling fairly melancholy, however. Whilst I don’t particularly regret the hiatus I took—my reasons for leaving were legitimate, it allowed ample time for self-discovery, and it ultimately led to a social circle less reliant on one core group of people—it did leave me wondering what if? What if I hadn’t chosen to disappear? What if I had actively maintained those relationships over the past decade?

The convention served as a very physical reminder of the community I gave up and the friendships I had fractured because of my own, individual grievances; and that was, at times, a bit of a downer.

It’s too late to change things now. I can’t expect folks I unilaterally left behind to accommodate me in their lives now. That’s their choice now, I can only say I’m sorry and try to be better.