BlogHer

The tides have turned, ya’ll!  I used to be the one who never won anything.  I know I’ve talked about it on this here blog at least more than once.  BUT, it would appear lately that my good fortune just keeps rolling in.  All I can say about this is.. I feel very fortunate.  And you know what happens after you feel fortunate?  You want to share it with the world. Because you know what it feels like to be “on the outs”.  And you want others to feel what it’s like to have such good fortune.

And maybe, just maybe, you don’t really need the windfall that fell in your lap in the first place.  Heh.

Such a wonderful has happened to me today.  I found out from the Parent Bloggers Network (of which myself and my review blog are members) (btw, keep an eye on my review blog next week for a fantastic GIVEAWAY!) that I have won a free registration for the BlogHer ‘08 Conference, to be held in San Francisco, CA this July 18-20.  Which is, as you know, a fabulous prize worth about $350.  I don’t know about you all, but I don’t have that kind of money laying around on a day to day basis.  Now BlogHer?  Is totally worth it.  But still.  It’s a lot of money, especially if you’re staying at home, like I am.

As fabulous a prize as this is, I already have my registration.  Since I’m speaking, BlogHer is covering my conference registration costs.  So you know what this means?

I’m GIVING IT AWAY!

Oh yes, friends.  I’m giving away one, fabulous conference registration to BlogHer ‘08.  Two full, fabulous days of fantastic sessions, speakers and discussions, two fabulous cocktail parties and one un-conference if your heart so desires.  ALL OF IT CAN BE YOURS.

All you have to do is leave a comment here telling me what session you are looking forward to going to the most of all, should you win this fabulous prize.  If you can’t narrow it down to just one (I’m sure I couldn’t!), then feel free to list your top picks.  You have until midnight (PDT) on Wednesday, June 4th to enter.  After that, comments will be closed and I’ll be selecting a winner at random!  The winner will be announced in that Thursday’s post.

Sound like a good deal?  Well then put your thinking caps on and get commenting!  And feel free to spread the word.  I’m going KRAZEE, people!  Get in while the getting is good!

I don’t know if you knew, but I’m going to be at BlogHer this summer. Yeah, I may have mentioned it once or twice. I’m excited about it. I’m going to get to see some old friends and hopefully, some new ones. And all the even NEWER friends I might meet! The possibilities are endless and truly one of my favorite things about going to BlogHer is discovering new blogs and meeting new people. It’s a lot like summer camp that way, I guess (not that I’ve ever actually been to summer camp). Even though we’re going to be staying with my parents down in San Jose that weekend, we have actually reserved a hotel room at the Westin for Friday night, so I’ll only have to worry about commuting up from San Jose on Friday morning instead of both mornings (which was really stressing me out). That’ll be fun too, even though we’ll have two little kids with us.

Yeah, Evie will be hitching a ride with me for the duration of the conference. I’m guessing that even though she will be pushing four months, she’ll still be a perpetual “nurse me/hold me” baby. As for Liam, he will either camp out in childcare or sightsee around S.F. with Kile. Having both the kids with us means we can’t really go to the cocktail party. Either Friday OR Saturday (but especially Friday, when the party is at a nightclub). So it would seem we’ll be making our own fun instead. And you know? That’s cool. I’m just so happy that I’m going to be there PERIOD, that a cocktail party doesn’t make much of a difference.

But I’d be totally lying if I said that I wasn’t feeling very nervous too. I do every year, that’s true. Maybe not so much last year because I had Zoot as a human shield. But being around massive amounts of people tends to make my insides turn to churning acid.  I’ve purchased some nice clothes that I can hopefully wear some of to the conference.  I should probably hunt down some cute shoes, to be honest, but as far as fashion goes, I think I’m doing pretty good.  The rest of me? Well…

I’d like to think that I’ll lose a bunch of baby weight between now and July but I’m not hanging many hopes on it.  For one thing, I’m not taking thyroid medication.  This makes me nervous because it was the unhappy thyroid that caused me to pack on the pounds in the first place.  And, like a lot of women, I’m self-conscious about it.  I worry about what other women will think when they see me.  I see pictures of myself from past BlogHer’s and am horrified that people saw me looking like that.  And, truthfully, the weight is only part of that.  In general, I don’t care for how I look.  My hair rarely behaves or looks like anything remotely decent.  My face, particularly these days, is blotchy and uneven and I’m pathetically poor at applying makeup to improve the appearance.  My features make me cringe to see them: eyes too small, nose too wide, chin too large, teeth too discolored… Not to mention I’m too tall to begin with and my bones resemble those of a linebacker.  Nothing petite here.  All gangly and awkward.  Even when I do take my glasses off.

I hope some of you won’t mind hanging out with me anyhow.  In the meantime, I’m going to try to work on my self-image and self-confidence.  I’ll get there.  Hopefully.

You’ve heard it before, I’m sure. Women bloggers referring to this community we all are a part of as being rather like junior high on occasion. It’s not just the mommy bloggers, though admittedly, we’re a rather large part of the community and a vocal one at that. Anyhow, this always comes up when people are invited to events that others aren’t (CampBaby and the RealSimple dinner party, to name a couple) or at the national BlogHer conference or any other such thing. People feel left out, is what it boils down to. And that reminds them of junior high.

Do you remember junior high? I sure do. It was AWFUL. Except that for me it was “middle school” instead of junior high. Same thing. Anyhow, it was the worst three years of my young life. Of course, eventually I grew up and gold older and realized what a really bad time was all about. For those early years, middle school was the worst that I’d experienced. There was such uncertainty, insecurity and awkwardness.

As far as I know, no one ever misses junior high. Well, except for that one girl in my carpool freshman year of high school. She always said that she missed it, but then again, she was a cheerleader in middle school so she totally doesn’t count. (Yes, my middle school had cheerleaders.) (GAH!) It’s pretty much an awful time for everyone. Which is why I guess that people are extra sensitive to junior high rearing it’s ugly head once we are safely ensconced in adulthood.

Still, I think that any perceptions of the blogging world being like junior high are a little off. And, if you’ll excuse me, a little manufactured. I think we’re doing this to ourselves, ladies. If you think it feels like junior high, well, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. “If you think it, it will come” (Or some such rubbish, you get the point.)

Look, I understand that it sucks to be left off the “invite list”. It’s awkward to be at a conference full of hundreds of other women and everyone seems to be leaving you out of their little groups. It’s easy to get jealous when you see other bloggers getting lots of fabulous swag that you would have loved to get. And what about the paying gigs? Those are sure nice too. I’ve felt that way a little myself from time to time. Shoot, I used to write posts on this very blog about how I felt about being “left out” of the cool kids and lamenting not being an a-list blogger.

But I’m over it now. Because I realized two very important things: 1) if it’s meant to happen, it will. Just give it time. And 2) that’s not why I’m blogging in the first place. When I wrote my very first blog post, I never in a million years thought, “It’ll be no time until I start earning the big bucks!” or “I wonder when I’ll invited on an all-expense paid trip to collect fabulous swag?” or “Book deal, here I come!” No, I keep this blog for me, first and foremost. I like writing for it every day. I can’t imagine my life without it. If you told me that if I wanted to keep blogging I would have to forfeit any income opportunities, swag, invites, book-deals, etc then I would say, “Okay, no problem.” Because it isn’t any problem to me. Sure, those things would be NICE but they’re not why I’m here. And I suspect that they’re not why you (those of you with blogs out there) are here either.

BlogHer conferences are a lot of fun. They’re intimidating as heck, I sure know that. But if you open yourself up, introduce yourself to a few people (just remember, they’re probably as nervous as you are!) and really just enjoy for a moment that you’re at the greatest gathering of women bloggers ever conceived, well, then you’re just bound to have a great time. And maybe the invites and book deals and swag and jobs will eventually come your way. And maybe they won’t. You just need to be okay with that.

There is enough to go around. As long as you are blogging because you love it and that shows in your writing, you’ll see opportunities start to come your way. But the more you whine and complain and have yourself a little pity party about what you’re not getting, well, the longer it might take to trickle down to you. In the meantime, let’s all be happy and excited for those of us who are getting the book deals, the invites, the swag and the newspaper interviews. Not only is it awesome for our fellow blogger who has worked long and hard and deserves it, but it sets a great precedent for the rest of us. It means more opportunities for the rest of us.

So let’s graduate, shall we? Leave junior high behind once and for all? Sound good?