Category — BlogHer Diaries

As you read this, I am currently on my way to BlogHer (unless you are reading this after I land, in which case, I am there), and I feel a little ill-prepared.  When I first signed up to go, I had great intentions to make new business cards with my correct information as opposed to using the out-dated business cards that I’ve used for the last four year.

[So few people seem to want my business card that I still have over half a box left.  Do YOU want my business card?  I swear that it’s really cute.  I think my overabundance of business cards is a sign of just how few times I interact with bloggers in the face-to-face world.  Either you already know me, so what’s the point in getting my business card, or you don’t know me and I haven’t even told you that I have a blog much less a business card.]

I had great intentions of writing out a schedule for myself — a strict schedule — and making plans and sucking the marrow out of the experience.  It’s very hard to suck out the marrow if you’re spending half of your time discombobulated.  You can suck much more marrow out of an event if you walk in with purpose.  I think.

I read a lot of posts these past few weeks of people planning out their clothing and getting manicures and generally becoming well-groomed.  I did not purchase new clothing.  I never get a manicure anymore because my nails are of two different lengths for guitar (non-existent on my left hand and medium-length and a little scuffed on my right).  I did not groom myself except to shave my legs and that was so I didn’t mortify myself at the pool earlier in the week.  I feel a little like Missy Wallflower, going to the dance in a dress she made out of old curtains while all the other girls are blond and sleek and dressed to the nines.

I’d like you to picture me, for a moment, in old curtains.

I seem to be going into BlogHer goal-less.  Without a clear purpose beyond Thursday afternoon when my Pathfinder Day presentation ends.  I mean, I want to meet people — but that’s sort of an amorphous goal.  I plan to sort of just drop into conversations with new people and find new blogs to read.  There are panels that sound interesting, but I don’t have a highlighted schedule yet as I did the first two years I went.  Other people seem to know exactly what they want to do, exactly where they want to go, exactly who they want to meet.  They have signed up for exciting opportunities outside of the walls of the hotel.  I have not.  I just want to see my friends and make a few new ones.  But that doesn’t sound like it falls into the realm of “enough” when you hear what other people have scheduled into their trip.

I have come to realize, as of late, that I tend to lack purpose.  My guitar teacher asked me what I wanted to learn and my only answer was… guitar.  I have no goals with guitar, no songs I desperately want to learn.  I am happy playing whatever comes up.  I’m happy achieving whatever I achieve.

The same attitude has followed me through much of life.  I am not a competitive person, and sometimes that comes out as a lack of ambition.  I have had three major ambitions in life post graduate school and they mostly make me sound like a 1950’s housewife: I wanted to get married to someone great.  I wanted to have children.  I wanted to publish a book.

I’ve had smaller ambitions since then.  It was my goal to be the room mother at the twins’ school.  I made a beeline for the sign-up sheet, forgoing being social with any of the other parents milling about.  While they were chatting, I was triumphantly signing my name to the sheet.  I felt like I had just won a 10K.  It was also my ambition to hit #1 on the Kindle list with Life from Scratch, but that hasn’t happened yet.  You win some, you lose some.

Perhaps the problem with achieving your major goals is that it can make you complacent elsewhere.  When I was single, I was hungry to make relationships work.  I’m lucky now that this relationship works on its own because if I had to guide it, we’d be lost.  When I was doing treatments for the first time, I had this amazing drive, able to push myself into doing anything.  I’m not sure where that drive went because I certainly haven’t poured it into something other than family building.  I think a lot of us do well with the lead-up and then flounder with the happily-ever-after.  How many posts have you read that ask “now what?”  Anne Lamott beautifully covered this phenomenon in the writing world in her book, Bird by Bird.

Except that I’m totally happy with the “now what.”  I am utterly content to keep trucking along as I am, though I worry from time to time that I’m missing something.  That I should want to have more goals.  That I should be more driven.  It’s sort of like when you’re young and you don’t really know if it’s YOU who wants to get married or if you’ve received a message from society that tells you that you should want to be married. (For the record, I really sat with this question and I decided that it was me who wanted to be married.)  I’m not quite sure though, when it comes to ambition, if it’s me or societal expectations that I’m following.

I read these blog posts that speak about outfits laid out and new business cards made and I feel like I missed something, which makes me feel like I must in turn be missing out on something.  A fabulous new friendship?  Memories that will float me happily into fall?  A fantastic new opportunity?

Sometimes I wonder if it was infertility that has turned me into this ill-prepared being, unable to organize herself properly before attending something so she can suck all the marrow out of it.  It’s easy to blame infertility since it’s such an ugly beast and therefore naturally serves as the receptacle of problems, but I think something needs to be said about negatives and how they beat you down.  It is hard to keep getting up and plugging away at your goals when the finish line keeps getting moved. (Well, yes, you got pregnant, but now you need to stay pregnant.  And now you’re staying pregnant, but you need to get to term.  And now you’re nearing term, but you hope the child is born healthy.  And along the way, you keep getting sent back to start.  Or sometimes, you don’t even start down the path at all.)

Publishing rejections hurt, especially when friends are having an easy time in the writing world.  But they didn’t drain me in the same way that infertility did.  Publishing rejections made me angry.  Anger is a fire; it produces energy to make you keep going and prove them all wrong.  Infertility made me sad.  Sadness is like finding out your gasoline cap has been off for the last few miles and now your engine is full of air and not working (or whatever happens when the car starts stalling because your husband left the gas cap off).

Maybe it’s just old age.  Maybe it’s the fact that blogging is no longer shiny and new, but more like a comfortable sweat shirt.  Maybe it is infertility.  All I know is that I had great intentions to prepare myself prior to arrival and I didn’t.  I’m here, without a goal I’m trying to accomplish.  Simply being.  And hoping I don’t miss out on anything by living my life this way.  But feeling like I probably do.

Do you like to plan things out or just see where life takes you?  Do you think you can truly suck the marrow out of an experience if you enter it ill-prepared and needing to take time to figure things out?  Do you think you can truly suck the marrow out of an experience if you over-plan life and try to control it rather than just letting what happen, happen?

I wasn’t going to go to BlogHer this year.  Back in the winter, I was having a bit of a nervous breakdown and Josh suggested that I take one thing off my plate that gave me anxiety.  Flying to California by myself was one of the things keeping me up at night, so we removed it from my plate and it instantly made all other things feel manageable.  It’s funny how you can trick the mind that way.

Then Elisa wrote me to see if I’d speak during Pathfinder Day, the pre-conference conference.  It sounded really cool, and suddenly BlogHer was back on the table.  The anxiety was back too, though so many things had been added to my plate since I originally removed the trip that it now felt more like a dull buzz than a scream.

I am not great with flying.  Actually, that’s really an understatement.  I am terrible with flying.  I am so anxious on a plane that I can’t think.  I usually sit, staring straight ahead.  In case you were planning on suggesting that we go on a tour of Europe together, I wanted to let you know that I don’t make the best travel partner.  At least getting there. (I’m usually fine once I’m on the ground and I pick up new languages quickly so… perhaps if you could just ignore me until we reach our destination I’d be a more attractive choice of travel partner.)

I am anxious about being so far from home; so far from everyone I love.  I am anxious about being in a big crowd and finding people I’m looking for.  I’m anxious about the logistics — eating or getting from point A to point B.

I am not anxious about the actual Pathfinder Day.  I’m actually very excited to talk writing and publishing with fellow writers.  I am grateful to be asked to be a part of it.  It sounds like a way to take a very big conference and make it small.  I hope to connect with a lot of people that pre-conference day and it will carry me through the conference.

I always have a good time once I’m there.  When I get home, I’m happy I went.

I am not sure how much I’ll be able to blog through this conference.  I’m trying to travel light; that theme of shedding things has carried through the whole year.  I’ve created ways to blog from small objects, so while you may not get my deepest thoughts until I get home, I will hopefully get to throw up some pictures of ALI bloggers I meet along the way.

Just promise me that things are going to be okay because that’s where I am today.  Taking deep breaths.

I’ve had two or three days now to marinate with my thoughts and discuss the trip with others. This was my fourth conference, which definitely made for a different experience.  The first two came back-to-back and I was definitely wide-eyed and excited.  I met probably 200+ people that first conference.

The third conference came last year in Chicago and I was in this perfect space to both connect with people I knew only through the computer, see old friends I met at prior conferences, and meet new people.  I probably came home with over 100 business cards again and spent a week or so diligently looking up new blogs to read and adding Twitter feeds.

This fourth conference made me feel old.  Not old in the grey-haired sense of the word (though yes, I noticed as I stood in the bathroom and stared at the other women sharing the mirror that I had more grey hair than anyone else washing their hands at that time), but old in the blogging sense.  I’ve been around the block.  I’ve seen bloggers come and go.  I’ve written through five summers by this point, and it can make you a little Eyeore-ish as you approach a month for the fifth time around and need to keep it as fresh as it was back in the mid-aughts.

I was also coming off a month of stress and upheaval in a summer that was going to be an emotional one regardless.  I was depleted before I got to the Hilton, and I know that plays largely into the lethargy I felt when I arrived.  I am usually overwhelmed in New York.  Throw 2400+ bloggers in a hotel with a low-energy woman and you have the makings for a perfect crying storm.

I didn’t actually have a perfect crying storm until I hugged Eden, but still, you know what I mean.

After the festivities Thursday night, I stayed mostly in the hotel.  I went to a bunch of keynotes and a lot of sessions.  I swung by the sponsor room for about a half hour and got overwhelmed by the poor Hillshire Farms people who were trying so kindly to get me to try some sandwich meat.  I learned a lot about photography, but you wouldn’t know from the pictures I’ve taken since.  I attended some panels.  I met up with a lot of ALI bloggers.

Looking back over the last few paragraphs before I continue, “overwhelmed” seems to be a running theme.  But I own that–I don’t think it’s the fault of the conference.  Truly, the only part BlogHer plays in that is that the conference has gotten so incredibly large and popular that it is difficult to navigate the stream of people.  I came home with 15 business cards–I only met 15 new people.  It is just too hard to latch onto conversations as people swarmed past.

But what is the flip side–to limit attendance?  No one would be happy with that either so it’s just a fact about the differences that come from 1000 people vs. 2500 people.  And frankly, I get a little cranky when people write snarky BlogHer-sucks posts when they get home.  You just got to partake in this fantastic opportunity and to get hung up on small details feels a little bit as if you’ve taken an enormous dump on the conference planner’s breakfast plate.

And with that image in your head, back to my mood.

My mood made me want to scream out something wholly inappropriate and I’m not sure why.  You know how you have those daydreams during math class such as “what would happen if I pulled down my pants and danced on my desk right now” (what?  Am I the only person who wondered these things?)

I felt very much as if I was blob of oil traveling through everyone else’s vinegar and I wanted to scream something and create an emulsion.

Of course, I didn’t.  Because I’m sane.  And because I also didn’t want to get asked to leave the conference before I got a chance to learn how to use Photoshop.  And because wonderful people such as Lori and Sheri and Calliope and Briar and Liza kept me grounded.

And despite my mood, I had a wonderful time.  On Friday, the ALIers got together for lunch and on Sunday, a much larger group got together a second time, blending every room of the blogroll into one enormous chat-fest in the lobby of the hotel.

After the first two conferences, I came home and raced head first into a dozen blog projects.  After the third conference, I came home full and happy.  And this time, it was like an old woman finishing her tea, a small ritual, necessary for staying grounded, and now refreshed, able to return to what she was writing before she started letting the tea leaves steep.

I do the conference differently every year, and this year, I remained the truest to myself.  I went to a tiny sliver of one party, I avoided the swag, and I just spent time with old friends.  And that is perhaps the best road for me.

You may need to click twice on the image to see the larger version.

Top: Calliope and Eva.  Kir* and Me.  Me and Lesbian Dad.

Middle: ALI Friday lunch.  Eden, Tuesday, and Me.  Lori, Eden, Me, and Tuesday.

Bottom: Sparklecorn cake.  Lori and Eden.  Lori and Eden.

* One of the highlights of the trip was meeting the always amazing, Kir.  She is one of the first bloggers I ever read (as in July of 2006–that’s how long we’ve been together, babe).  I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time petting her and reminiscing about the old days (or covering the new beyond what is written in our blogs).  I know I’m going to see her again, but I’m glad we snapped this picture from the first time.

“People who say blogging isn’t important can kiss my ass!”

–Annisa at BlogHer10 during the blogging through grief and loss session.

I’m back home now, and my thoughts and pictures are now coming to you wholly out of order based on what is on my mind as I sit down at the computer.  I have a lot of pictures to download from the camera, a lot of stories to still tell.

Instead of keeping in order, I will jump over Friday and land in the middle of Saturday afternoon.

It is impossible to sit through an hour-long discussion on grief and loss without a lump in your throat.  It is impossible not to grieve with the person as they describe their loss, and it is equally impossible to not think of the people you know who aren’t here.  When there is a five-minute discussion on death, you can skate through the words without your body reacting.  But sit with a discussion on loss for an hour, and you will find that your neck changes.

It felt important to be there, as if there was only one possible place I could be during this session slot.  Though I couldn’t tell you why.  I think my main reason to be there was for Cecily because I don’t think she has been allowed to grieve as deeply and as cleanly (or, perhaps a better term, messily) as she needs.  I think people stick their hands in her grief by turning her loss into a political issue.  And because of that, I wanted to be there and have her see that tangible support because I love her.  And the reason could be, I decided, as simple as that.

Someone expressed before the session that she was afraid the session would become a cult of grief — not the panel so much as the audience.  Because the Internet has a tendency to do that.  We do it and we need to own it.  We start reading someone after the loss occurs because we see everyone else reading them.  And suddenly we are there, talking about it, grieving with them, jumping into the loss — and we take it to a deep place even though our connection rises out of a shallow trench.  I’ve written about how others process your loss on the Internet before.

(Sidenote: I am not talking about grieving along someone you have known — even online friends — but opening up the relationship with grief.)

And is it wrong to jump into a stranger’s grief?  Well, yes and no.  I mean, I have passed by someone in pain in a public space, someone I don’t know at all, and I have sat down and spoken with them and listened to their story and cried with them, and said goodbye and moved on.  Because we’re human and many of us cannot see someone in pain and simply walk by.  We can do the same on the Internet with words as our virtual hug.

With the exception of the fact that support often comes initially and then disappears except for a random few, I don’t think there is much negative that comes to the griever who mourns with the support of the Internet.  Some have said that there can never be a negative side of support, but I think there is for those who observe an outpouring of support and then later grieve and don’t receive that support they noticed earlier on given to other people.

In other words, I don’t think support can ever damage the grieving person, but I think it can damage the future griever when the future griever notices what can sometimes become a cult of grief — an outpouring that goes well beyond the initial reach of the griever in terms of how many people they know or who know them — but the future griever doesn’t receive that same kind of support for their own pain.

Which, of course, is not to say that those outpouring shouldn’t happen for the first griever, but simply to be mindful of the future grievers as well.  That all people deserve support.

I think this session did the same good work that Glow in the Woods does — it provided a space for people to sit with their own grief, to get comfortable with the idea of reaching out to another person and comfort them, to discovering the right and wrong things to say.

I managed to not cry until Eden spoke.  I don’t know why.  She wasn’t even saying anything particularly upsetting, but I was remembering this night when Josh and I were at the food store and I was telling him about a post with Dave’s cancer and AA meetings and I’m not sure what else, and I remember standing near the dead chicken part section of the food store (apologies, as a vegetarian, I mentally divide the food store into edibles and dead things) and sobbing while I told him about something that moved me in that post, and I was suddenly reminded of it hearing her speak and I felt the tipping point occur, where the tears finally came.

And was it — as the person who raised the question of the cult of grief also feared — what amounts to a grief boner?  Well, no.  It wasn’t.  It was catharsis.  It was full circle.  It was coming home again.  I can say that because I lived it and I know how it felt in the moment.

Annisa said the quote at the top of the post and it’s true.  Blogging is important.  And possibly an even more brilliant quote came from Kim who said, “I don’t talk about it like this [and pointed to her mouth], I talk about it like this [and pretended to type].”

And that is perhaps the most important message I took away from both the panel and the hug that came from Eden at the end of the talk.  That there is a reason we all write and it is because we need to write in order to make sense of our world.  Our words are out there just as much for ourselves as they are for others.

And that is perhaps also the source for placing our hands in someone else’s grief.  Because we know how our grief feels in our body (and everyone experiences personal grief), and perhaps, when we involve ourselves in another person’s grief, we are merely touching their grief to see if it feels similar to our own.  And it is just another small echo of “me too” that we take and give.