Hey, all! Rich ("Cyan") here.

As I'm writing this, I am currently riding Greyhound on my way back home to the Boston area. Anthrocon 2019 concluded just a few hours ago with 9,358 attendees total. As tired as I'll be by the time I get home, I will also feel satisfyingly accomplished. It feels so much like attending my first AC back in 2011. At my first Anthrocon, I got an excellent experience as to what people in this fandom were really like, and I immediately felt at home with them. I was so happy from my first experience, never before have I ever felt so non-alienated. I didn't expect to feel so belonging in the furry community when I attended back in 2011. I only chose to go to AC because it was a bucket list task, a convention that I wanted to experience because of my interest in anthropomorphic animals. It was never an attempt to fit in, or try to "out-furry the rest of the furry community". I was just a fan, and an artist too. I went to AC to please myself. But the fact that I had so much more in common with other people in the furry community than I thought made me feel very welcome, and my feeling of being accepted by this fandom only kept on growing from there. I began going to local furmeets, developed a fursona, opened up an FA account, and it all made me feel right at home.

Anthrocon 2019 feels so much like that. It's a sign that I'm feeling at home in the fandom again, seeing the wonderful people I've met at the con before like they've returned home. With the past several months getting gradually better for me, depression and anxiety melting away, health slowly improving, more availability to go to furmeets again, I am radiating optimism about the near future, as I expect this trend will continue, as well as more exciting possible opportunities and events on the horizon. Some of these events are mysteries for now, but I'm confident that they're going to be great events happening soon!

Future cons I'm planning to attend include "Saturday Morning Contoons" in Woburn, MA (August 23-25), and Furpocalypse in Cromwell, CT (late October). I also plan to do a trip to the Quad Cities to see the mascot I designed for the Quad City Flames, but is now the mascot for the Quad City Storm, sometime during the 2019-2020 hockey season. These are just events I'm already planning, and I still sense more exhilarating things to come in the near future for me. I can't wait!

Now, about my time at AC, it was a brilliant weekend. It was my first time fursuiting at the con, and the happiness that I gave to those in Pittsburgh in fursuit was undeniably rewarding. I was especially grateful to have participated in the fursuit parade on Saturday, along with the fursuit meet and greet afterwards. Not even the heat from the Pittsburgh summer weather could ruin my love for spreading joy.

I went to a sketchbook swap on Saturday night, followed by a Zootopia fan panel after that. I also saw Uncle Kage's Story Hour, got to commission Scotty Arsenault, met one of the guests of honor, Ben Diskin, got a Haida pic signed by him, and I managed to give him some gift art I've done, which I'll post later.

Well, as much as I'd like to stay online, Greyhound's wi-fi is notoriously limited (only 20MB of data left that I can use), so I think I'll end the message here.

Thanks to everyone at Anthrocon who keeps on making the convention the great convention it always becomes, staff, fellow attendees, the Pittsburgh citizens, all who are involved. I hope everyone else who attended got the same satisfaction, and all have a safe trip home.

Lpoking forward to the next time I go!