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.

*******

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.

*******

Wait. I should back up.

*******

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.

*******

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.

*******

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?

*******

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.

*******

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.

*******

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.

*******

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.

*******

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.

*******

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.

In elementary school, if for some reason we couldn’t go out on the playground for recess; for instance, if there was going to be a nuclear war between DC and the USSR, we’d stay in the classroom and get to see one of the two filmstrips the school owned.  I always wanted to be the film projection helper, but I didn’t actually know how to thread the film so I was never chosen.  This is still a source of sadness for me.

Anyway.

One of the films was The Red Balloon, which was fine.  But my favourite film was the other film: All Summer in a Day. It was based on a Ray Bradbury story and it was about children living on Venus where it rains every day.  The children (save one) have never seen the sun, though scientists have predicted that the rain is going to stop and the sun will come out for two hours on this one particular day.

One child is beyond excited about this because she is from Earth and she remembers the sun.  Moving to Venus has been impossibly hard for her, and this is her one chance to enjoy her old life.  But she is the victim of a prank and the loss used to (and still does) make me feel physically ill.

I’ve found the film in three parts (apologies, you’ll have to watch them one after the other for this indoor recess) on YouTube.  Wait, why are we having indoor recess?  There isn’t inclement weather.  There isn’t a threat of the USSR attacking our playground.

Because I’m at BlogHer and doing the Roundup properly will be too difficult on the technology I brought with me.  Since I can’t give you your normal playtime, I’m giving you an alternative recess rather than moving straight into the next lesson.  Because that’s the other option, you know: extra math.

The Friday Blog Roundup will be back next week. In the meantime, use the comment section below to add your favourite blog posts and I’ll have all the ones from last week and this week in the next Roundup.

And tell me what your elementary school did for indoor (or alternative) recess.  Did you also have this film?

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

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.

Harry Potter turns 31 today.  He was luckily born the same year as my brother, which is also a nice round year on the calendar, so it’s easy to keep his age straight (thank you, Ms. Rowling).  Which means that the great battle took place in June of 1997.

I wonder if he had a birthday party that year.  I mean, despite the good that came from that, his world was also shattered with all the loss; with what he witnessed.  I wonder if he felt like digging into some chocolate cake a few weeks after that fight.

Which made me think about where I was on Harry Potter’s birthday back in 1997; what was happening in my life as he was recovering from battling Voldemort.

I was living in Massachusetts, working at a camp where I taught art.  I lived in a co-op for free in exchange for being the handywoman/point person.  My grandfather died, and I was heartbroken.  I stopped weeding our co-op’s garden and the strawberries overtook the plot of land.  I had just completed my translation project for graduate school.  I had a crush on a boy named Pete, but we would have been terrible together, so we didn’t date.  I babysat a lot.  Dave Matthew’s video for “Crash” seemed to always be playing when I turned on MTV.  I ate vegetable sandwiches pretty much for every single meal that summer so I must have also had three on his birthday.

A really ordinary life.  You juxtapose that with the birthday Harry Potter must have been having.  Were people lining up to give him presents, grateful for all that he did for them?  Was Ms. Weasley holding up her hand and saying, “I know it’s your birthday, Harry, but my heart just isn’t capable of whipping up a cake and streamers for you just now.”

What were you doing at the end of July 1997 on Harry Potter’s birthday?