Event-Based Shopping

I have realized that if it weren't for big events like trips, conventions, reunions, etc., I might never buy new clothes. Yes, I seem to have a nice wardrobe and am moderately stylish, but almost all of my clothes/shoes shopping is done with a particular event in mind. I very seldom just decide to go shopping because I want to see what's out there.

And now since I do have an event coming up, I have new clothes. I spent some of my birthday money yesterday buying a bunch of tops at TJ Maxx (I headed out to look at phones but decided that might not be the best idea while I was tired and cranky after dealing with small children, so that may be this afternoon's errand). They're all fairly basic, but this means that I will be wearing almost entirely new clothes next week, and nothing I've worn to previous Worldcons. I may look kind of like the Southwest Airlines commercial where their customer is stylish because of getting two free checked bags while the other person is rotating the same items and mixing and matching because I will be rotating among a couple of skirts, a pair of jeans and a pair of capri pants, with different tops for each day. Now I just need to allocate clothing to events. I've decided that Saturday will be my "casual" day for jeans instead of a skirt because my only programming that day is the writers workshop, and the evening event is the Hugos, which I'll be skipping because awards ceremonies are dull unless you're up for an award.

I've scrolled through the schedule, and it seems like the usual convention rules apply, where the things that sound cool tend to be opposite my own program items. I'm not quite sure how that always seems to work, but it does.

I'm really going to try to be more social for this convention. I like to set myself a challenge for this sort of thing, and this year is a combination of being social and networking. Now that I think of it, I should have made some business cards. I have postcards and bookmarks for my books, but I don't have regular business cards. I have inkjet card blanks, so I guess I'll add that to my to-do list.

For a career PR person, I really suck at publicity. That may be why I'm happier and doing better as a novelist. My PR career would have probably utterly floundered if I'd tried to stay in it. Or I would have gone insane.

I should probably set a goal for increasing my number of Twitter followers, or something like that, but I'm not even sure how to quantify that, and I'd rather have fewer followers who are really engaged than a lot who ignore me. Right now, I seem to have a few who mostly ignore me. I guess I need to come up with the kind of content that tends to spread.