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I have spent the past few days, mostly unplugged, recovering from BlogHer09. It was an experience I can't yet, nor will I probably ever be able to, simmer down to a few words, or even into a few concise thoughts. It was a weekend of inspiration and introspection. I laughed, and I cried. At times I felt completely alone, and at others I was swapping stories with new friends. I left Chicago feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, but also with renewed desire to get back to blogging as I once did. And to think I almost didn't go.
I had spent months convincing the shy and insecure parts of me, which can be pretty resistant to persuasion, that BlogHer09 was something I needed to do. I had to do. When I registered, I still had not really fully talked myself into going. But I was running out of time, it was almost sold out. Fortunately, I snuck in just under the wire for registering. That's when the real anxiety started to set in. A few days before the conference I was hit by a wave of panic. I almost talked myself out of going. There were going to be so many people there, and I didn't know anyone. I'm not the type of person who can just go up to someone I don't know and talk to them. What was thinking signing up for this? And on purpose.
I didn't sleep a wink Thursday night, still I was completely wired Friday morning. I was so nervous about not knowing anyone and not fitting in, but I was also excited by the possibilities for the experience that was yet to be. Betty Please had to give me a push onto the escalator to get me off on my own, and headed to check in to check in. Once off the escalator I stopped for one final pep talk. I took a deep breath, and headed in.
It didn't take much observation to see that many people were in the same boat as me. As my table filled up, I sucked up my fear and put on a smile. I introduced myself and made small talk with those who I could. The same thing was going on at tables all around me. But the small talk didn't last long. It was interesting to watch one person after the other pull out their laptop or handheld, and become in engrossed in online activity. Email. Twitter. Facebook. I suppose some were even blogging. I chuckled as I thought it ironic that the conference theme was, "in real life."
In trying to distill this whole experience down to a single coherent post that isn't the size of a novel, one thing I keep coming back to is something I heard said as a joke, "BlogHer is like Soylent Green, it's people. BlogHer is people."(I wish I could remember who said so I could them credit, but I can't. So if it was your quote, thank you. Claim it if you want.) Now I don't mean this quote in a, "we eat our own" kind of a way, but in a "it's all about connecting with other people" kind of a way. For me, connecting with other bloggers was what made BlogHer09.
I'm pretty glad that the Queerblogger session was placed in the first set of sessions to choose from. I thought if I had a chance of fitting in anywhere, that would be where. Also, I had been looking for forward to meeting Recovering Straight Girl , and Deb on the Rocks. We had a small and diverse group of attendees, about 15 women. Since the group was small, everyone was able to participate in the conversation. And wow, these women are smart and well spoken. They made me want to shut up and just listen. I really got a lot out of our discussion, I just wish the session would have been bit longer. If you'd like to see some of the conversation, you can read the Official Live-Queerbloggers-LGBTQ bloggers. Unfortunately, our live blogger lost wifi connection in the middle of our session and lost the middle bit of the live blog, but you can get the gist of things. I wanted to give a shout out to Amy at Pretty Babies, our live blogger, not only
