Pursuant to Myke Cole:

Noting that a bar at a convention can serve as a professional space is not a reason to keep going back there when you've repeatedly "had problems" (been a problem for others) in them.

It's a reason to stay out of it.

Will you lose out on professional opportunities? I mean, maybe, but at a certain point in your career what do you actually need from barcon networking that won't come to you anyway?

But let that go. The needs of the many, my man.

I discovered a couple years back that Benadryl (and any product containing it) and alcohol are a reliable blackout combo for myself. For non-drinkers: blackout doesn't mean passed out. It means not aware of what I'm doing, no memory of it later. Dangerous for me, and others.

This means that no matter what else is happening, if it's my birthday or if it's a party or if I'm hanging out with a drinking friend I don't see very often, if I have to take Benadryl, I am not drinking. That's the rule. I can't choose to risk it because it's not just my risk.

If this is what happened to me every time I drank, I would not be able to drink. Couldn't do it safely, so shouldn't do it. If that meant I couldn't be around alcohol, that would mean I couldn't go into a bar at a convention.

Separate but related conversation here about how we can move more of those "work conversations" out of bars, but. Even if the majority of them happened in open lobbies and seating lounges, I'd still miss out on some stuff.

But FOMO doesn't trump others' safety.

Fear of missing out on friends, on meeting people, on making connections and getting opportunities, does not outweigh the safety and even reasonable comfort of others.

At a certain point, when your pattern of behavior requires you to ask your friends to tell you when you're out of line because you keep "messing up"... I mean, isn't that the point to step back? Like, all the way back?

I don't know anything about Myke Cole's finances or how much hustle he puts in to get a gig but looking at his credits I really wonder what a hit his career would even take if he just... absented himself from the convention circuit.

I've been stuck on a word in his apologetic thread and I've been stuck on it for about a day. He says he's humiliated.

And. I.

I guess it is humiliating, and it's good that he doesn't turn his humiliation into immediate anger, as some men do in this situation.

But.

If I felt humiliated over how I behaved not just once at one event but at so many that they blurred together, I like to think I would simply stop going to them. Not go back in the hopes that I can do better.

"So that's it, he's exiled into the wilderness forever?"

I dunno, I'm not in charge of these things. But the impression I'm getting is that since his 2018 pledge to do better, it's still been a work in progress?