FanX 2015 is now in the books, and, well… I’m feeling pretty weird about not going. This was the fourth major pop-culture convention held under the Salt Lake Comic Con brand, and, counting the rival FantasyCon, the fifth convention of this type in Salt Lake in the past fourteen months. And my lovely Anne and I have attended all of them… until now.

We chose to sit this one out for perfectly good reasons. Coming only a handful of months after the last Comic Con in September, and only one month after Christmas, it was hard to justify the expense again so soon. Plus, we’re saving our pennies for a major adventure we have planned for the fall — more on that another time. And also, the first few celebrity guests that were announced just didn’t excite us that much. The con this time around looked like it was going to be built around several TV properties that are very popular right now, but which we’re not that into: Doctor Who (which I enjoy but I’m not crazy about), The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones. And to be perfectly honest, I think we were just a little burned out after going to four of these things in the space of a year. So we decided to pass on this one, and we were perfectly okay with that decision.

Later on, I was tempted when the organizers announced Christopher Lloyd, who was scheduled for one of the earlier cons but disappointed us by cancelling, but we decided one person really wasn’t reason enough to change our minds, considering the cost. Then came Carrie Fisher. I’ve met her before at a book signing, already have her autograph and a fuzzy snapshot of myself with her… I adore this hilarious, eccentric woman and would love the opportunity to get a better photo with her, but… I’ve met her before, so it was okay. Anthony Michael Hall and Ralph Macchio, two icons of my teen years in the Awesome ’80s, would’ve been fun to meet, but I could resist them. Same for Ray Park, a.k.a. Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. Or so I kept telling myself. By this time, I was experiencing some genuine pangs of regret, but I stuck to my guns.

Last Monday, only days before the event, the organizers announced they’d gotten Nichelle Nichols, a.k.a. Uhura in the original Star Trek television series and movies. She was the first celebrity I ever met, way back in 1988, and the snapshot I have of her with me and my college buddy Jaren is one of my most cherished mementos. Jaren and I chatted soon after the announcement about how fun it would be for the two of us to take that photo to her and ask her if we could recreate it… but he wasn’t going to FanX this time either. If he had been, I would’ve caved. As it was, it just wouldn’t be as much fun to meet her again without him along, not after he and I had talked about it.

Then the con got underway, and a couple of my coworkers went to it, and photos started appearing on Facebook of cosplayers and celebrities and little kids with big excited eyes, and the local news covered it every night like it was a big important political rally. And those little pangs of regret started mushrooming into… something else. I felt an anxiety I haven’t really experienced since I was a kid. I’m an only child and I always liked being around the adults more than kids my own age, so when the adults were off someplace where I wasn’t welcome — parent-teacher conferences, R-rated movies, parties or bars, you get the idea — it drove me absolutely crazy. I couldn’t stand the feeling of not being included. I sometimes worked myself into a complete dither because I might be missing something. That’s what I’ve been feeling all weekend as FanX 2015 unfolded. Like there’s something happening that I should be at, but I’m not.

I kept these feelings to myself, at first. I thought I was being silly. Then, Friday night, Anne asked me if I wanted to try and go for the final, biggest day, which was yesterday. Saturday. I asked if she was just indulging me. And she said no, that we had been there at the beginning, at the very first Salt Lake Comic Con when nobody thought this thing was going to fly, and nobody knew what they were doing. “It’s like we’re a part of it,” she said, “and it feels really weird to not be there.”

I kissed her on the end of the nose and told her I felt the exact same way, and that I loved her for saying it.

We did not go, in the end. Again, we had reasons… money, timing, other priorities. Grown-up, responsible reasons. But we spent an hour tonight looking through other peoples’ photos on Facebook, and wishing we hadn’t been so damn responsible…