I have had so many babies

I have officially decided that hosting events is just like giving birth.  Now, before all you women out there who have given birth start throwing placentas at me, hear me out.  According to my only close friend who has given birth it was pretty much the worst experience of her life.  I mean, totally worth it and meaningful and blah blah she has a baby now blah blah motherhood is amazing blah, but really a truly painful experience.  A statement like this is saying something because she is by far the strongest woman I know.  For reals - she is the female Chuck Norris, meaning that she's the only person on the planet tougher than Chuck Norris because Chuck Norris doesn't have ovaries that get filled with babies.

Anyways, the thing with childbirth is that it's super painful and horrible and EVERYONE who does it swears over and over again that they will never do it ever again because why would anyone put themselves through that intentionally?  But then a couple of years later (or a couple of months in especially insane people) they start talking about doing it again!  Why?  Because there's some brain chemical thing that happens that makes ladies forget just how horrible it actually was.  I mean, they still remember that it was painful and have terrifyingly detailed stories to tell about things stretching and ripping (and why again do people do this?  Oh yeah, populating the planet, gross.)  But the visceral, salient memory of just how horrible it was and how much they swore to never do it again fades into memories of never sleeping or eating properly and crying and puke all over everything (and why again do people do this?  Oh yeah, populating the planet, gross.) and suddenly being pregnant seems fun again because everyone is really nice to you when you're pregnant.

And that's pretty much exactly what it's like to host an event.  You start off thinking that it will be great to bring people together and have a party or put on a play or whatever.  The initial planning phase is super fun and exciting and all possibilities and how cool the event will be.  Then things slowly get more and more stressful until all of a sudden it's the day of the event and nothing is going right and there's no time to eat and you're spending all this extra money on last minute stuff and you're TERRIFIED that no one's going to come and everything's going to be horrible and nothing will work and you swear under your breath way more often than usual and hey, maybe you'll just get hit by a car on the way to the venue and not have to deal with this anymore but of course no one ever hits you with a car when you really need them to.

So you're stuck hosting because nobody had the common decency to hit you with their car.  And then even if it goes well there are things that weren't how you hoped they would be and people who you really wanted to see didn't come and people you are awkward around did come and you suddenly remember all the ways you could have done things differently and it's just never quite how you imagined it would be.

The only real difference between child-bearing and hosting events, I think, is the quick turnaround time.  Nearly immediately after an event, or even while an event is happening, I'm already mentally preparing for the next.  Thinking of how I could do it differently, how the next event will be even better than this one.  I guess we can only hope that's a second difference between childbirth and event planning - I would like to think my parents didn't decide to have my little brother to see if they could improve on what they got when they had me.

Oh great, now I've activated my middle-child syndrome again.  Thanks a LOT.

2 comments:

  1. So are you going to host New Year's again this year? Because that was awesome.

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  2. That's the plan! Why on earth would I want to stop having party babies?

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