UFOs... Success, Failure... and Exhaustion

So, last post (on Thursday) was about going away for a few day.

And so, off we went, to the small seaside town of Ocean Shores, Washington, to attend the annual "UFO and Paranormal Summit" there. Because the event organizer is part Native American, he's able to use the vast facilities of a Tribal casino and resort for this event.

Assorted Purposes...

Now, when you hear "UFO and Paranormal" you might think a bunch of conspiracy theory freakazoids wearing tinfoil hats — and whereas those certainly do attend — that is actually a far cry from reality.

Most attendees are pretty "normal" people typically of much above average education and intelligence; many of whom are scientists, astrophysicists, inventors, scholars... along with a smattering of former government and military officials now working on various types of "disclosure" projects.

It's also not a rag-tag crew of misfits traveling around in a flotilla of beaten up camper trucks, but a rather large event with massive amounts of advertising on both Seattle and Portland area radio stations, drawing from a 6.5 million people population center.

Why do WE go to things like this?

Well, aside from Mrs. Denmarkguy being one of the keynote speakers, and myself going as a vendor... we're just interested.

And a large part of the current "movement" within the UFO/Paranormal community is to pull this kind of discussion material out from the "fringe" and into a more well-illuminated mainstream space. Because a lot of people have had some kind of "weird" experience in their life... and yet never talk to anyone about it for fear that "people might think I'm crazy!"

When I was a teenager, I saw "lights in the sky" that I could not explain, and because I was a wannabe astronomer and "sky watcher," I knew what "the Moon" and "Venus" and "Light reflecting on an airplane" and "the sun on a satellite at night" looked like. I also knew what "Chinese Lanterns traveling in a high wind" looked like.

None of it matched up.

Who's looking at you?

When I Was in College...

I arrived at the University of Texas in Austin, straight from having lived primarily in Europe for the first 20 years of my life. As part of making foreign students feel more "welcome," I was assigned to a "host family," to help me settle in, 6,000 miles from home.

Mickey and Dorothy were very nice people... and their last name also happened to be Strieber, and they also just happened to be the uncle and aunt of author and UFO researcher Whitley Strieber. He spent quite a bit of time in Austin and was — at the time I knew him — just starting to plug into the "UFO/Paranormal" aspect of his career (he was already an accomplished fiction/horror writer) so we would talk quite a bit. Both because I had aspirations of being a writer and because of the UFO connection.

I remain very interested in exploring the various ways in which "there is more between heaven and Earth than we can possibly understand" manifests around us. Mrs. Denmarkguy is more "woo-woo" than I, but we share this interest.

Some would dismiss a lot of things as "nonsense," but I don't. Instead, I open myself to the possibility that we simply can't see and measure certain things... YET.

Let's face it "microwaves" and "radio waves" didn't suddenly "spring into existence" simply because humans could suddenly detect and measure them. They were always there. I think there's a lot more stuff that's there," that might take us another 50 or 100 years to be able to detect.

Success... and Failure

Going to an event as a vendor is pretty exhausting. You have to be "on" for as much as 12-13 per day for two or three days. Plus you have this tiny time window in which to create an appealing "mini store" and then another tiny time window at the end to take it all apart and haul it back home.

Vending is particularly exhausting when you put forth all this effort and come away with — in essence — mediocre results. And you realize that with prep time, travel time, convention time and putting-away time when you get home... you just put in 67 hours of work in order to make $22.30.

The sun sets on another conference... till next year!

And anyone who insists "Yeah, but it's great EXPOSURE!" is either delusional or has never vended! "Great exposure" is one of the business world's greatest "useless platitudes."

Thankfully, we did NOT have mediocre results and we agreed — on the three hour drive home — that a successful event is far less tiring than an unsuccessful one.

And so, we had a fun weekend, and the electricity, insurance, phones and Internet get paid for another month... and there's a bit left over for groceries!

Which is — in my opinion — as it should be. If you bust your butt at something you do well, there should be proportional reciprocal compensation... not just a big fat zero in the ledger.

Meanwhile, I still have a moderate case of "conference brain..."

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!

(As always, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 190304 17:04 PST
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