Category — BlogHer Diaries

There is this term I learned recently — lebensneid, or life envy.  It was coined — I believe — by Nietzsche (it certainly sounds like a Nietzschean word) to discuss this common human practice of wishing we had things from each other’s lives, this wanting of what we don’t have that we see other people (we believe) enjoying.  Do we want their life with our self intact, or do we want their self (which brings with it their personality, their coping mechanisms, their physical characteristics) coupled with their life?  It’s unclear.

All I know is that while this is not unique to BlogHer (come on, you see this every single day as you pass houses, children, jobs you covet in the face-to-face world), it is inevitable that if you get 5000 people together in a single New York hotel, all people who compete somewhat with one another for page views, you will find people expressing or poorly suppressing their envy of each other’s friendships or readership or awards or opportunities.

I think it’s important to separate out when talking about BlogHer what people brought there and what people found there, and I say this as someone who has been to a lot of BlogHers.  I have only good things to say about the conference itself, the people I met, the information I learned, the keynotes I heard.  BlogHer — the conference — created a lovely frame, a skeleton constructed out of panels and parties, and we as the conference goers filled in the figurative muscles and organs with what we brought with us.  I witnessed the good: extreme generosity, love, and empathy.  And I also witnessed a lot of envy.

People envied the tangible: the invites to private parties, the cool clothes that seemed effortlessly put together and worn, the swag.

My G-d, the Expo Hall, ground zero for coveting.

It wasn’t the items so much as it was what those items represented.  The Expo Hall brought out what amounts to lifestyle envy; to want the life of someone who is sought out, begged, given nice things just because.  What being courted by brands represents, how some people view it as a sign of importance.  Even if you’re not into working with brands, it is heady to be wanted; it is understandable how we want to see the worth of our lives, to have strangers want us (specifically us and not some other bloggers!) to write about their item.  Our families have to love us, but there is something special about our partners who choose us.  And that is how I think some people feel when those brands reach out (or don’t reach out).  It is nice to be the object of someone’s affection just as much as it is nice to be the object of someone’s choice., whether being chosen for a job over all other applicants or chosen to write on our blog about cleaning supplies.

People envied the intangible: accomplishments, a blogger’s style, the fact that she is always surrounded by people.  There was the life envy, wanting other people’s traffic or relationships to another blogger.  I saw people envying the ease of which other speakers spoke.  I saw people wishing they were someone else.  I listened to snippets of conversation around me as people hypothesized the readership of other people’s blogs.

Of course, no one knows the reality of someone’s traffic.  And even if we knew the number, could we really say whether their 5000 daily visitors have 10,000 eyes who care about them?  Or is the 5000 closer to maybe 2000 with 3000 coming over for a quick hit from a Google search, never to return again?  It’s possible to put too much stock in numbers.  Those subscribers, those unique visitors, it’s impossible to say who wouldn’t miss you tomorrow if you were hit by a bus and never updated your blog again, and who would sit there with their hand over their mouth for hours upon hearing the news.

Because one of those categories of people are worth feeling envious about, and the other is simply warm bodies, interchangeable with any other warm body.  It would be like caring which people walk beside you on the sidewalk not interacting with you.  I had hundreds of people around me when I walked to Starbucks on the last night, but only 4 of those people mattered to me.

But I did the worst coveting of all, the most unbecoming coveting, the most literal definition of lebensneid.  I coveted the babies that people carried into sessions, lightly kissing the top of their child’s head while they hung suspended from their mother’s chest in a Baby Bjorn.  I wanted to kiss a baby too.  I wanted to absentmindedly stand in the back of the room, swaying to keep the baby moving while I listened to someone talk about SEO.  I couldn’t stop staring at all the babies, even when people noticed me staring at their child and unconsciously turned their body as if to shield them.

I am not envious of those mother’s lives; I have no idea what goes on in their homes or relationships or if I’d want to be part of their world as a friend much less as them.  What I envy is the life they are holding, the ability to choose to create life and create it.  I am envious that if their heart starts tugging at them years down the road and they have the financial means to do so, they can create more life.

That, of course, is the problem with lebensneid.  I am making assumptions about their fertility knowing full well that people could look at me and think all went easily.  These women holding babies may have back stories that would blow my mind.  But I didn’t see that.  I just saw the milk-scented head popping out of the baby carrier and I coveted, I coveted, I coveted.

I could care less about the brands.  I am okay with my lack of style.  I am comfortable with the size of my readership.  I hold the friendships I do have close to my heart.  But my G-d, I wanted one of those babies.  I wanted to be needed by someone small.

We all have our own version of lebensneid; it is personal, private, uniquely informed by our life experience, by our lack of life experience.

I admitted to mine.  What do you envy?

Oh BlogHer ’12, you are over.  The suitcase is unpacked, the Martha Stewart notebooks have been disseminated, and I am ready to sit down and organize how I felt about this year’s conference which was — for me — tied for first place with my other favourite BlogHer conference, good old 2008.  Shall we unpack the good, the bad, and the… well… not necessarily ugly but certainly not the most becoming behaviour.

The conference kicked off with an opening keynote from the President of the United States.  His face smiled down at us from live feed screens while Elisa Camahort Page and Lisa Stone sat below. (Jory Des Jardins couldn’t make the conference this year because she was 36 weeks pregnant.)  Not a bad way to kick off a conference, you know, with a talk from POTUS.

That night I went out to the dinner at the Heartland Brewery with a slew of ALI bloggers: Half Baked Life, Too Many Fish to Fry, A Blanket 2 Keep, Dragondreamer’s Lair, Write Mind Open Heart, Bereaved and Blessed, the Rumour Mill, and the Kir Corner.  Dinner can be abbreviated as food, fantastic conversation, the largest cockroach in the world, and a thwarted walk down to Magnolia bakery to get cupcakes.  Seriously, you have never seen someone cajole and charm like Kathy, and they STILL wouldn’t open the damn door and sell us one red velvet bite.

Over the next few days, I went to panels and keynotes.  Favourite session (beyond my own) was on pitching to media; in other words, tips for getting freelance article jobs.  Really really helpful advice that I will type up this week and post for everyone to read.  Favourite keynote had to be Katie Couric.  I am not a television fan, but seeing her speak live convinced me to watch the Katie Show when it starts airing in September.  She was very down-to-earth, realistic, and frank.  I loved the point she made on how she can’t comment on the infamous Slaughter article because she isn’t the average American woman; that her ability to have it all is couched in the fact that she can afford to hire live-in help.

VOTY (Voices of the Year) was amazing, as always.  I laughed hysterically at some posts.  I cried with Kathy over others, especially one where a mother tries to explain a friend’s imminent death to her child who wants to help so badly and can’t understand how none of his ideas could stop death from occurring (oh my G-d — I just felt my throat close up just thinking about this post).  I did a run through of the sponsor room to thank the sponsors for bringing down the cost of the event.  I skipped over brands that I already knew (they didn’t seem to need my presence either) and went for the unknowns, which is how I found out about Zamzee and the very nice guys working the booth gave me some to try out.  You wear it all day and then plug it into the computer before bed, and it measures your movement for the day.  I cannot even explain how much this feeds into my deep need to record everything at the moment.  The twins are loving the ones I gave them, and they are already plotting out ways to move more (“I will just jump up and down in place while you make me my yogurt in the morning!”).  And I listen to their plans and then make my own to MOVE MORE than them, just to prove my superior healthy habits.

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BlogHer was huge this year — about 5000 people when all was said and done.  It created a strange phenomenon: it was impossible to walk anywhere without bumping into someone you know (or, at the very least, recognize), but it was too big to actually find specific people, even if you were both in the same room.  I never found Eden at all (Eden?  Eden?)  There were plenty of people that I only saw briefly in passing (Jodifur and Magpie pop to mind).  Sue and I got to grab a whole 10 minutes before we realized that it would be easier to go on an IKEA run when we got home with 6 kids than it would to try to find each other again at BlogHer. (Though how sad is it that I invited myself along on Sue’s IKEA run, trying to convince her that I can be her little helpful shadow as she buys plates?)

And yet, there were people I got to see a lot on the trip, people who were very hard to say goodbye to as we each went back home.  Too Many Fish to Fry left at the very end of the conference to catch a plane back home.  Half Baked Life stayed as late as she could, curled up on one of the lobby chairs while we talked, promising that we would drive at each other soon.  Bereaved and Blessed finally slipped upstairs with her sister after we had shared our neurotic travel stories and high school tales.

And then, I finally had to say goodbye to Write Mind Open Heart at the end of a final breakfast the next morning, after I lingered in her room while she packed, unable to go upstairs and throw my own possessions in a suitcase because that would mean the trip was really really over.  It is so hard to have your friends scattered across the country.  I am so grateful that we were able to all come together at this conference and have the face-to-face time.  I love all of you through the keyboard, but it can’t erase the need for those times when we can actually sit across from one another, touch each other, hand each other tissues.  That good overwrites any of the bad that comes from a conference this size: difficult to navigate hotel, long lines, and problems with meals.  You care less about an elevator wait if you’re standing there with someone you are so grateful to be able to grab time with regardless of what you’re doing.

There was an audio recording made of the session, but I unfortunately can’t upload it because people said very personal things during the session, and I realized that I didn’t feel comfortable making those private moments public.  But I will try to edit a version this week that gives you just the panelists’ portion of the talk.

I have not yet gotten to the unbecoming, but I think I will unfold it in my next post.  Stay tuned.

Sitting on stage, in four-inch orange platform sandals, Martha Stewart expounded on what makes for a successful blog: personal, openness, passionate, sharing.  She spun off on the idea of monetization, of placing a value on your blogging effort, but my mind kept shuffling through the writing side of her advice.

It needs to be personal, showing the personality of the author.  It needs to have openness, giving part of yourself to the reader.  It needs to be passionate, making the reader care as much as you care.  And it needs to be sharing, you need to convey something or what was the point in spending time in the space?

It seemed like such a simplistic – and true – equation for creating a successful blog; a formula for how to create a successful blog.

If you scale each trait from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most and 1 being the least, how does your blog add up?

Personal: how much of your personality shines through?  Have you created an alter-ego online who doesn’t mesh with who you are offline?  Can people define your bloggy voice?  Give yourself 1 – 5 points for how well you’re doing this.

Openness: how open are you with readers?  Do you hold a lot back?  Do you feel like you have an arm up, holding curious people at bay?  Give yourself 1 – 5 points for how well you’re doing this.

Passionate: how excited are you about your own life?  If you’re not living the life you want to live, can you write an exciting blog?  Is a lack of energy in living life seeping into your words?  This is not just about happiness; are you passionately conveying what is in your head?  Give yourself 1 – 5 points for how well you’re doing this.

Sharing: are you conveying something?  Are you conveying new things?  Do you keep rehashing the same thoughts?  Can you think of things that people learned at your site that they couldn’t learn elsewhere, even if it was just something about what is important to you?  Give yourself 1 – 5 points for how well you’re doing this.

Be honest – how did your blog score AND can you now see places where you could improve and change your blog’s fate?

As you read this, I am on a swanky swank bus traveling up I-95 to the annual BlogHer conference.  Or maybe I’m actually already there by the time you get to this post.  I don’t mean to imply that I am going to be indefinitely traveling the interstate until you read this.

This will be my fifth annual conference.  I think.  Working backwards: I went to San Diego (2011), New York (2010), Chicago (2009), and San Francisco where I distracted Lori from learning about Twitter (2008).  Yes, so this is my fifth conference.  Though perhaps the first one that I am entering without feeling completely discombobulated despite the fact that I have been living on Jupiter all summer.  Some of that comes with the fact that it is closer to home than past years, some of that comes from getting a lot of work accomplished right before I left (just in time to return and be behind again!), and some of that comes from knowing so many people going.  I’m going to get to see a lot of old friends as well as meet people that I have spoken to online for many years.  Plus I woke up an hour before everyone else this morning so I could finish packing while everyone else slept and have time with the twins and Josh once they were awake.

As I’ve done in the past, I’m going to write posts and upload photos when I can from the conference.  I am traveling sans laptop, so we’ll see how well this works.  If nothing else, look forward to seeing a photo montage of a bunch of ALIers when I get home.  But I think I’ve figured out a way to post from the road.

Also know that I’m probably going to be slow to add people to the IComLeavWe list over the next few days or respond to email.  No worries — you don’t need to resend.  I’ll get to it when I get home, but I’m just explaining the lag time.  Not that I’ve been excessively on top of things in recent months so it may just feel like business as usual.

I would love to take you along with me as I have in the past, so feel free to leave a comment below and direct me here or there, to meet people or hear things or take a photo.  I love having you along with me in my pocket for the trip.  It makes the wheels on the bus go round and round.

I wrote the bulk of this post on the floor of an airport, and now I’m finishing it up back at home on very little sleep.  The rational part of me is whispering that I just might want to wait to post until I’ve sat on it for a bit.  The sleepy part of me is telling me to just post it already so I can move down my to-do list and get back into bed.

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Every time I see Eden I end up crying. There is something about that woman that can bring people to catharsis. Someone should bottle her and sell her to therapists.

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Wait. I should back up.

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I had a hard time leaving for the conference this year, as many suspected from my morose posts preceding the conference. It was a combination of not being emotionally in a good space to be that far away from home coupled with a somewhat chaotic exit complete with a tech fail and the ChickieNob crying as Josh put her in grandma’s car with this look of terror on her sobbing face. I had this mantra running through my head: I can’t do this I can’t do this I can’t do this. Which is bizarre because I have traveled the world. I have traveled alone. I have gone to BlogHer 4 times. But I think we all know that our heart doesn’t always listen to the facts our rational brain spits out.

Feeling lost was a theme for the weekend, and I want to preface this by saying it was me — not the conference.

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As I got on the plane, the couple sharing the row with me leaned forward as I dropped my bag onto my seat.

“Oh, thank G-d. We were so worried you’d be someone who’s 500 pounds, but you’re so little.”

I just stared at them without saying anything until they looked supremely uncomfortable. Then I sat down and cried through most of the flight because I missed Josh and the kids.

So really, you’d rather have a very mucous-y crier than someone within a certain weight? Poor choice, I think, poor choice. I didn’t even want to be around me.

*******

I spent the first night feeling very alone. I took a small walk and thought I saw Briar. Relieved that I had finally bumped into someone I knew, I threw my arms around her. And as I pulled away, I realized that it wasn’t Briar at all. It looked like Briar if someone had taken Briar’s face and melted it a bit.

Before I could give my embarrassed apology, the woman beamed and said, “I know you! You’re Melissa Ford! It’s true what people say about you being very friendly!”  I didn’t have the heart to tell her my mistake.

And her words made me feel supremely self-conscious because, internally, I saw myself as anything but friendly. I saw myself as someone who wanted to hide away in her hotel room and stress-read Harry Potter rather than get lost in the conference; that thing I had flown across America to be at.

I seriously didn’t know what was wrong with me.

*******

Pathfinder Day was such a great day. I had a wonderful time with Carleen and Colleen and 40 or so people talking about books. I love to talk about publishing. I connected with so many people that day and took so many business cards, which translates into new blogs to read. I left it feeling full.

And then it was over, and I wandered aimlessly all night. I sat near the bar and cried into my telephone to Josh. The people at the next table over stared at me, but no one said anything. It was like when you hear someone got food poisoning and you’re eating at the same event. No one wanted to come near my bummer-of-a-time in case they caught a case of my emotional vomiting too.

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Cali talked me down to breakfast, but when I reached the hall, I knew I was in the wrong space for me. It was the right space for so many people at the conference, but I felt like the place I was supposed to be was home. Someone commented that they had never seen me so sad.

I can’t stress enough that it wasn’t the conference itself. BlogHer in and of itself was lovely.  The panels were well curated.  The food was so thoughtful (vegan options AND gluten-free options?). At its core, the conference was the same as it had always been, but it was as if someone was playing a lilting Mozart concerto and we were all enjoying it, and then someone else started playing the Beastie Boys next to it. And I’m sorry, but few in our generation are going to listen to the concerto when they can dance their ass off to the Hot Sauce Committee.

Competing with the actual conference were private events scheduled during the panels. Which meant the panels were sometimes semi-empty (or at least it felt that way when you knew that there were 3600 people at the event), with the exception being the ones talking about brands and pitching companies. The classical topic of the conference — writing — was being edged out by the rock and roll of monetization.

I know there were those of us who were there because we love blogging, and the blogging we love is synonymous with writing. That it is a writing form just as novel writing or journalism or poetry is a writing form. But it was hard to find one another. And it felt very lonely to be thinking about writing, to be caring about community, to be talking about the blogosphrere, when right next to you the majority of people are talking about how they need to leave the conference to attend a private event. As much as I love classical music, it’s hard to listen to it when everyone around you is grooving to hip hop. It makes what you love look awfully boring. Like work. Like unpaid, unappreciated work.

And who really wanted to stand there awkwardly admitting they want to do unpaid, unappreciated work when the people around them are going to glittery events and walking away with iPads to boot?

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But I want to do unpaid, unappreciated work.

Well, the unpaid part.

I’d like to be a little appreciated. Or at least have my words resonate with someone.  I’m willing to work for comments.

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My entire experience could have been changed if I had just changed my outlook.  If I had agreed to go to the parties or the private events.  But I was so entrenched on remembering BlogHer’s past, where I was able to just connect one-on-one with someone over a quiet meal or grab a few people together to get dessert.  I remembered years past where we spent the bulk of our time during the day in the various panels or keynotes.  I wouldn’t have been lonely if I had just thrown my hands in the air and said, “fuck it, I will go to that brand’s little champagne party with you.”  So I own it; my mood was entirely on me.  And yet I couldn’t seem to shake it.  To get over myself and have a good time, because it sure as hell seemed as if everyone else was having a good time.

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What turned it around for me was the Voices of the Year keynote. I took a seat smack in the front so I could videotape Cecily. I was so proud of her for getting up there and reading, and I wanted to cheer her on because she has always had my back.

I also knew Eden was reading, but I didn’t know what it would be about. She started her presentation with a picture of Max, and I suddenly knew exactly which piece it would be. And it was like someone had punched me straight in the chest, finally giving me the jolt that brought me back into my community. She was telling this room of people about one of our own; about one of the first bloggers I ever read. My children still sleep with the stuffed koalas Vee and Max sent them (though Barbie co-opted the mini Australian flag). She was talking about his art, and my mind was on the piece they sent us before he died to fill our blank wall.

After Eden was done reading, I emailed Vee. And that is why I blog. Because it makes the world smaller. Because I met two people across the world via our words and struck up a friendship because of our shared interest in writing and art. In expressing ourselves. Eden read a piece that is essentially about the connections forged by blogging, and in that moment, hearing about one of our own, and being in a room with people I read and care deeply about, and being able to email a woman halfway across the world to bring her into the moment; this moving moment about her husband…

That is what blogging is to me.

That is why I do it. I don’t do it to make money or get free iPads or meet celebrities. I do the unpaid, sometimes unappreciated work for the human connection. Because without it, we wander around aimlessly, lonely even though we’re in a sea of 3600 people.

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Afterwards, I met up with Magpie. We talked about the strangeness that is a blogging conference. It sort of has the same emotional feel as a high school reunion, where you’re seeing these people you sort of know, at least you know some aspect about them, but you realize at the same time that there is so much that you also don’t know. That there is a whole life beyond the sliver you know and you want to figure it out. And you’re so happy to see them. Some of them mean a great deal to you, even if you’ve never told them that.

As I stood there, I reminded myself that not one post in the community keynote had been a sponsored review or an ode to a brand. Those posts may exist, but they’re not celebrated.

She said, “I go to BlogHer to see my tribe.”

And that is when you realize the brands and private parties and holier than thou attitudes are just noise. They’re not music. People think they’re music because they see people dancing, but if you actually listen closely, you’ll notice that it doesn’t have a beat. How can it when it has no heart?

Humans have hearts — not brands.

You can with bummed out by the brands and barrage of product reviews, thinking that it’s the new permanent state of the blogosphere. Or you can choose to ignore it and go out to dinner with friends, eating quesadillas at a lovely little outdoor bar by the harbour. You can just be thankful that you get to be in that moment, having that experience. And you can realize that as long as those moments exist, blogging will also be about writing and community. And, like Magpie says, you’ll find your tribe.

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I am glad I stayed. I had considered changing my ticket on Friday morning and leaving as soon as possible. I am so glad that I stayed. It would have been terrible to miss the community keynote and leave with this very skewed image of the state of things.

I spent most of Saturday with Eden, and it was divine. She is so funny and honest and introspective. Being with her is like drinking water. She is like perfect temperature water.

I left San Diego the exact inverse of how I arrived. I walked through the hotel beaming. I went through security with a huge smile plastered across my face. I am glad that I went and stayed, but moreso, in the moment, I was just glad to be going home to Josh and the twins.

I got to the airport early for my flight and sat on the floor typing this on a mobile device. Because that is what blogging is about. It is about recording a moment, acknowledging our thoughts and the state of things, of shooting into the atmosphere an enormous, indelible sign proclaiming: I was here. I exist. I have ideas and opinions. I am part of this huge, crazy thing we call life.

And I have to do it. I have to do it badly enough that it can’t wait until I’m in front of a proper computer. I need to type this enormous post on a mobile device and save it until I can upload it once I’m back into the land of wifi.

It’s my fucking music.

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That was BlogHer for me this year.  I have shaken whatever mood I arrived with and left feeling energized again about the state of blogging, about the need to connect with community, about the love I feel for all of you, on the other side of the computer, reading my words and letting me know and sharing your own.  Thank you for sticking around while I mentally muddled through that.