Well, Origins has come and gone, and now I must start considering if I'll go next year. Seriously, I have to start thinking about this now. Origins is not cheap. After everything is considered - hotel, food, travel, badge & events, plus frivolous things like booze and the dealers floor, Origins is probably close to $1000 Canadian for me. I don't think I spent that much this year, but it was close.

This year coming up is going to be really tough financially for me. I will certainly be cutting out a great deal of the 'fun' budget in order to pay for things like rent and food, as the cost of living in Ottawa is higher than it is here. In the past my strategy has been to simply save 10% of each pay in an ING account and this has helped cover both rent in the summer (when I'm not gainfully employed) and Origins. This year, I don't know if I can afford to actually be saving.

On top of this, Origins is always right near the end of the Spring term. This year I had to miss two days of work to go, luckily I got a friend to cover my seminars. Next year I really hope to be doing some instructing - and it's much, much harder to get out of instructing gigs than it is to get out of TA gigs.* The whole missing work for a game festival is not the best idea ever.

On the other hand, Origins is always a blast. Meeting up with the 'origins friends', ie people I know only through livejournal and Origins, is a good time. On top of this many, many people from around here are talking about going next year (we'll see what happens in 11 months) so, you know, not going when everybody else is would be a pain.

Okay. Let's see how much money I can save in the next 11 months, shall we?

*note, I have nothing but hopes for being an instructor. It is much more likely that I will just end up as a TA again

Tags: gaming, life