When I was a young lad of twenty-six years, I was wide-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready for anything.

Now that I’m settling into the “Autumn of my life,” the twenty-eight years I’ve been on this planet have really started to take their toll.

I usually don’t notice, but the one constant exception is The Conference. Any conference. Anything that takes place inside of huge buildings spread across large land areas, where I’m expected to wake up at three in the morning, skip breakfast for a keynote, and push through the day by surviving on warm string cheese, coffee, and the sweet halitosis of conference attendees who skipped brushing their teeth in favor of doing a hands-on-lab, and who repeatedly lean over to practically French kiss my ear while commenting on the finer points of any given speech.

It’s a fine way to spend time, but I’m learning that my stamina will typically only carry me through two or three days of such activities.

This time, registration for the conference began on Sunday, and the show pushed right on through to today. It is now Friday, and I am completely frazzled. My clothes are all soaked with sweat, my beautiful shoes have some new creases in the toes, my stomach feels like it has a family of beavers living in it, my hair looks like it has a family of beavers in it, and I’m seriously beginning to think that, rather than put my body through this again, I should look into seeing if it wouldn’t be possible to spend the rest of my life living in the wild outdoors, free of schedules, and perhaps to return the beavers that are now living in my body back to the wilderness. I’ll miss them, but all good things must eventually come to an end.

Because I know I’m not the only one who goes through Conference Frazzlementation Syndrome (CFS), I decided to put together a little comic to celebrate the process of mental and physical ruin that takes place through the course of one of these bad boys.

Experience it with me, my friends.

Conference Fatigue:

The first few days are rife with enthusiasm

New discoveries are made

Excitement starts to wane, but you fake it to stay in the game

And then the conference starts to catch up with you

It eventually runs you over like a !@#$ing freight train

By the time you finally get home, you're so whacked that knowledge retention is rather compromised

You really only manage remember the stupid things

And then you die