Posts from — August 2010

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.

By the second session of BlogHer10, I was exhausted.  My nervous system felt inflamed from the constant stream of people, the constant stream of information, the constant stream of opportunities rushing by you at any given moment.  You could turn in this direction and speak to this person who just may write the blog that will change your whole life, or you may turn in that direction and meet a food blogger who will pass along her pie crust recipe.  You just don’t know.

And the choices, the endless choices of which sessions to attend and where to sit and how long to talk and what to do with your day is the best and worst part of the conference.  Because you can’t really go wrong–all the roads take you somewhere–but it is easy to start walking down one path and wonder what is on all the roads not taken, and somehow miss the path you are on entirely because your focus is elsewhere.

It is an ongoing process of reminding myself to stick to the road I’m on.  To take what I need.  To enjoy myself rather than trying to do everything.

New York is a strange city for me.  It was one of my retreats during graduate school, but I can’t really say that I love the city.  I’m not a New York person.  Plus, I find my figurative battery draining the second I get through the Holland Tunnel.  By the time I hit midtown, I’m a puddle on the floor of the bus.  I literally can’t comprehend how I’m going to do anything beyond lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling.  No other city drains me like this one.

And, at the same time, I am having a lot of fun.  I spent Thursday night at two parties.  The first was one for BlogHer editors.

Devra at Parentopia

Devra from Parentopia and Sarah from Sarah and the Goon Squad

Laurie from LaurieWrites

Minnie, Deb, and Genie

Liz and Me

Suzanne and Paula

Sarah talking to Erin’s Head

Talking to Erin’s Head

Honeybeast and Devra

Devra’s weird shoes…

AV and the butt plug shoes

AV Flox

After dinner, I went over to Alexa’s hotel room to celebrate the release of her book, Half Baked.  The book looks incredible and I can’t wait to read it.  We stood out on the wrap around balcony and admired the city below, and I felt awfully small amongst the enormous buildings and endless lights.  We ate cupcakes.  We met up with friends.

City lights

Look at those lovely books.

Alexa!

With Heather

Kate talking with Amy

Heather

We returned to the hotel and met up with Lori and her sister, sharing a single cupcake well into the night that I completely missed photographing for the Cake Extravaganza (and an enormous thank you to the people who participated so far).  All in all, a lovely evening.  Next post–onto the sessions, the ALI lunch, and beyond.

Happy 300th (200th) Roundup to you

Happy 300th (200th) Roundup to you

July 21st marked four years

Happy 300th (200th) Roundup to yooooooooou.

Welcome to the 300th (fine…200th) Friday Blog Roundup.  As I said in the first Roundup* back on July 21, 2006,

Every time I read something I love, I want to send it out to everyone I know. Which is how I came to the idea to do the Friday Blog Roundup and comment publicly on a few things I read this week. There is plenty that I read that also moved me, but since space is limited, I must pick-and-choose.

(This is the same post where a young Melissa says, “golly gee, I sure would like to start an organized blogroll if I could figure it out!”)

What the Roundup meant four years ago is still what it means today: they are simply posts that I read during the week that stuck with me.  They are not all the posts I read that stuck with me, but they are four or five that floated to the top when I sat down to write the Roundup.  And I set them out there simply because I hope that you too will read these posts if you missed them the first time, or nod in agreement if they moved you too, and then jump into the comment section on that post and let the author know.

300 (okay, 200) posts later, and that last concept, sadly, hasn’t truly caught on.  So let’s remedy that for the next 200 posts.  If you click over to read (and for the love, you should click over to read because you’d want people to do the same if a post from your blog was here and hopefully, I do a decent job of remembering who has been featured and who hasn’t and keeping it fresh each week), please leave the author a comment.  Answer their question, let them know you’re abiding with them, tell them how hard you laughed.  The Roundup has always been about community discussion.  And it has been way too quiet.

So make a commitment to let one or two of the author’s know each week that you liked their writing if you did (it goes a long way in keeping someone writing), and now, let’s get this party started.

As I’ve been saying all week, to participate in the celebration, upload a picture of a piece of cake (and don’t get hung up on the words “a piece of cake” — if you want to bake a whole cake or celebrate with an oreo or simply walk by the bakery and take a picture and not put anything in your piehole, it’s all good) and then link to your blog post.  It would be lovely if you wrote something about what community means to you.  Why you love being part of the ALI community, and how you feel when you read a particularly satisfying blog post.  If you don’t have time to write a short post, simply post the picture of the cake and a link to your blog’s main url to show your presence at this virtual party. 

The party will be open until next Thursday night.  Check back to see who is in attendance.  And then mingle.

Thank you for celebrating with me.  Here’s to four more years.

* Thank you to those first Roundupers: Dead Bug, Richard (who has a breathtaking post at the top of his blog right now), Carrie, and Serenity.

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No Weekly What If this week because I want to jump back into the party once I tell you about this week’s posts.

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And now, the blogs…

The Miss Ruby has a post about not recognizing herself anymore and how we can never truly return to who we were before infertility.  We can only try to grab back what we can from that old life and mesh it with the new one.  And she asks a good question at the end: “when was the last time you looked into your soul & heart and saw who you really are?”

Big Love, Big Acceptance has a post about emotionally drowning.  Observing a baby at a nearby table interacting with her mother, BLBA admits how much she wants that and says, “I just wanted no one to talk to me, no one to look at me – like if these things were avoided, I could disappear. No one would notice the tears welling up in my eyes, or the tightness of my face as I tried to hold it all together.”  It is a post that lays bare all of her fears, and you will cry with her honesty.

Baby Magnesi has a brief post about the stupidity of the idea that a person can just focus on something else.  As if people have perfect control over their thoughts and emotions.

Lastly, My Infertility Woes has a post about how she has returned (after a brief hiatus) to liking kids.  I love the distinction she makes as well as her ability to take care of herself and take the time she needs.  It is not an either/all situation–it is merely a response to the moment.

Tucking whatever BlogHer posts I’m moved to write today (as well as pictures and video) below this one to keep the Roundup party post at the top of the blog.  So if you are following the conference at home, return later in the day and use the BlogHer Diaries tag in order to find all the posts.  And you know, while you’re here, you can see who else is celebrating the Roundup and visit their blog.

The roundup to the Roundup: Celebrate good times, come on!  And lots of good blogs to read.  Back later for more entries from the conference.