I looked forward to this past weekend for literally months. Not just because I planned to go to my first ACFW conference, but because we planned to go house hunting as well.
Like many young people, my husband and I wait for the day when we can move our of our apartment into a house. We are tired of paying rent and living with sub-par furniture, since moving is hard on furniture and we’d rather tear up cheep furniture then our good stuff destined for our dream home.
With all that in mind, we saved money and chose our dates with care. The conference was a fixed date. If we wanted to go house hunting at that time, then things needed to be ready. That meant we needed to be pre-financed.
We knew what we wanted, but could we afford it?
Long story short–we still don’t know.
My husband works for himself as a software engineer. He’s only had the company for about a year. Unbeknownst to us, the banks prefer to have two years of tax information before they’ll give you a loan. However, we have excellent credit and a down-payment already saved up. Would the banks make an exception? We hired a finance guy to look into this for us, and he’s still looking.
So when we went house hunting in Dallas, it was without a realtor.
2015 ACFW Conference
Since we planned to go house hunting, I decided that my time at the conference needed to be as stress free as possible. That meant no appointments, no gala, and no parties. I didn’t want to talk to any agents, editors or mentors (as useful as it would have been). I would go for to learn, and that was it. Classes were held on Friday, which meant I needed to register to attend for only one day. I also bought a jump drive with all of the classes on it, so when it comes it I’ll have more things to learn. Even with all that, I spent less money on the conference than most other people would on registration. I also finished my story, created my one-sheet, and prepared in every other way I could for the conference. However, since we didn’t go house hunting, most of the other stress factors were non-existent.
I learned a lot of things at the conference, but looking back, it wasn’t nearly as stressful as it could have been. If I could do it again, I think I would get an appointment with an agent. Maybe mentor as well. I was much better prepared than I thought I was for this conference. I should have done more.
However, I came away with a lot of information, and I enjoyed my weekend. It was not a waste, but rather an exercise in patience and a lesson to trust in God. He has a plan–I just have to wait for Him to tell me what it is.
Living with the Pun Master 