BlogHer, Beaches and Bambi – Part One

A week ago, I was in New York, exhausted, exhilarated and sticky hot. I’d just spent three days with a few thousand women and a handful of men who are passionate about the blogosphere and who have found a gazillion ways to make it their own. Yes, BlogHer 2010. Much has already been written about it by more ambitious or organized individuals, so I encourage you to troll Google a bit if you’re interested in a blow-by-blow of the conference. This was my second year attending it; I went without an agenda. I left feeling empowered and reinvigorated, awed by the scope of talent and possibilities, and profoundly moved by the breadth and depth of connections I developed. Friendship is a gift. I uncovered so many gifts, I didn’t care that I had no room in my suitcase for swag.

I feel pity for anyone who lives on the East Coast, or in the South. Having grown up in Colorado, and now residing in Southern California, I don’t know how to work with the whole HUMIDITY thing. I love waterfalls, but not when they are running down my back in the form of sweat. It was so humid in the Big Apple this past week that I could barely breathe. Where are gills when you need them?

by Patrick Theiner / flickr

Also, there is no sky in New York City. You have to be in the middle of Central Park or high up in a building to get any sense of a horizon. Very strange for someone like me, who has lived most of her life with the wide open expanses of the West.

by John "K" / flickr

I’d never noticed that before – that you can’t see the sky – and I’ve been to the city many times. I was born there. I have family there. It’s a great place. But I’m a West Coast girl. This trip reminded me how very much that holds true.

I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s place on the upper west side instead of in the hotel at which BlogHer was held. They have a gorgeous, rent-controlled apartment for which I might kill if I didn’t a) fear CSI technology and b) enjoy their company so much.

I could see the sky from their multitude of windows.

But I had to take a subway to the conference, which was in midtown.

I’m pro-environment and sustainable living – and was thrilled at the chance to chat with fellow BlogHer attendee Green L.A. Girl at Friday’s breakfast – but putting me in a subway on a humid, August morning with half of Manhattan is not the way to sell me on public transportation. I loved the Metro in Prague during the two years I lived there, but it was clean and air-conditioned and, honestly, I might have liked people more back then. My tolerance for human populations has lessened the longer I am among them. I really like my car. I like the bubble it provides me. And the control. I freely admit that living in L.A. has made me soft.

One-on-one, however, people can be amazing. At BlogHer, I could have talked (and DID, in some instances) for hours with Denise, Melissa, Lindsey, Jason, Justine, Silver, Amie… Old friends, twitter friends, strangers turned new-found friends.

That moment in a conversation when things click and the thought blindsides you: I really like this person, I’m going to know her/his name, I am listening, this matters.

People terrify me. I’m afraid that I’ll appear idiotic, boring, self-obsessed, insensitive, dumb, needy, egotistical… I never know what to say. I assume the person with whom I’m speaking would MUCH RATHER be talking to someone else, anyone else. And I forget that, frequently, the person with whom I’m speaking has many of the same fears. So it’s fairly remarkable when I step through my insecurities and I can sense the other person has stepped through theirs and, if even for a moment, there is contact.

That’s what BlogHer was for me this year… CONTACT. And I look forward to next year in San Diego for a bit more. But I could not have been happier late Saturday night as the conference ended and I made my way uptown for the last time, knowing that I’d be heading to Penn Station the next morning on my way to the shell-strewn beaches of East Hampton…

(to be continued…)

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