Lolita Wolf's Predictions & Predilections

This happens to me a lot. It goes something like this:

An acquaintance says, “I’ll see you at ______ (fill in an event).”
“I won’t be going to ______ this year.”
“You’re not teaching there?”
“Nope, not this year.”
The person is almost accusing me, “Why not?”
“Because they did not invite me to teach. And that’s okay.”
And now they are incredulous, “But you’re Lolita! How can they not ask you to teach?”

I totally understand why an event might not ask me back to teach. Events need to rotate their speakers. A good program director realizes that you can’t ask the same people to teach every year. Even if the presenter is very popular and offers a variety of classes, the event needs to make room for others to be heard. If they ask the same people back year after year, the event becomes stale.

I do not take a situation like this as a personal rejection. It’s a situation that has happened with several events. Usually it means that I get asked again in a year or two. And as someone who has done programming for several events, I have been on the other end of the situation making the tough decisions on who to ask.