The next three days are going to be trying. Like I said yesterday, I will have three exams, one per day, for three days. Plus that story for my Creative Writing class.

Luckily, after that, things let up, and at the end of it all, there will be a prize : VancouFur.

That’s the local furry convention, and I always go. I can’t even imagine missing it. I always have a great time, and I get to see some of the local furries from Back In The Day that I never see otherwise. And it’s lovely to spend four days (this one starts on Thursday) in a place where all us wacky and adorable furry types get to be ourselves and form a little temporary community of our own.

Speaking of furry communities, I am wishing I had some form of recognition for having founded the local furry community way back in the early 2000s. I was the one who started it all by starting the mailing list that formed the social hub for us local fuzzies to communicate with one another and via which I could organize events.

From there, I lead the group, got the monthly furmeets going, then later added the monthly furry dinnermeets where we could all go out to eat together. I ran that community for about five years before the events got too big and crowded for my anxieties, and I had to bow out and let someone else take over.

And that’s the reason there is a local furry community to support the foundation and running of convention in the first place, he insisted grumpily.

I didn’t worry about recognition for all the years since then because I was not mentally healthy enough to care. But now I do care because I am trying to build a stable core of self-worth and upon that some kind of deep and positive sense of self, and I need all the bricks and mortar I can get in order to do so.

And I don’t exactly have a lot of accomplishments to draw on for that, ya know?

Oh well. I guess founders are often forgotten. The local community has had a lot of turnover since I left it, and there’s barely anyone who has even heard of me left. As far as they know, the local community has always been there. They weren’t in it when it was founded and we were all just getting to know each other. When it was me and like six other local furs. They weren’t there for that first furmeet at the Cactus Club across the street from Metrotown, when I was so anxious about the whole thing that it was like a highly unpleasant drug trip.

I wonder if I should warn my lawyer about the bats.

I have to admit, I am a little nostalgic for those days. Not for the desperate financial situation, but for the community when it was small and manageable and I could go to a furmeet and have a grand old time without my background anxiety rising like the mercury in a thermometer until all I could do was hide out on the balcony until it was over.

I feel anxious just thinking about it. Sad face.

My leadership style was quite laissez-faire, as befits my laid back personality. I firmly believe that communities will grow organically and healthfully if you just provide the framework of organization and leadership for it to grow on, and then tend it carefully and lovingly.

So I only intervened to solve disputes and to decide things that needed deciding. My biggest concern was to make sure that the community stayed open and accepting. When a new person joined the community, my policy was to welcome them into the community at their first furmeet, then leave them alone to find their own space. I had great faith in the community’s ability to draw people in with its happy and accepting vibe, and watched as it worked its magic over and over again.

Someone would come in very shy, defensive, and anxious, and they would be pretty freaked out at first. Maybe their social skills were a tad underdeveloped. I could relate. But over time, they would come to realized they were safe here, and free to join in with the other kids on the playground without fear of bullying or rejection.

And the next thing you know, they are socially blossoming right before my eyes, going from shy and anxious to happy and free and relaxed.

Words cannot possibly describe how proud and pleased I am to have been able to provide that for people. Sometimes, the only way to get what you want is to make it happen yourself, and what I made was the exact kind of community that I had always longer for myself.

And in doing so, rescued a lot of other people in the same situation. Isn’t that amazing? That’s how the world should work, in my honest opinion. Positives building on positives, growing full and strong, until it can make it on its own in the world and doesn’t need you any more.

It’s a lot like raising a child, really. And I am proud of my baby, I really am.

I just wish he’d call home now and then.

All this is going to lead to me rejoining the local community, I think. I will have to choose my events carefully based on social density, so there probably won’t be a lot of regular furmeets in my future unless someone who has a really big place has decided to host.

But if there are smaller events, I could do those. William told me there are furry movie nights, and that might work if the space to attendance ratio is acceptable. And of course, meeting at a restaurant for a chat n’ dine type meeting is fine by my.

Of course, that doesn’t deal with one other problem :

Everyone will be so young!

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.