2006
Shoulda
–taken more pictures
–cleaned my lens
–used the flash
–taken more pictures
–made up some business card dealies
–packed ten fewer pairs of underwear
–eaten dinner
–taken pictures of my professional makeup
–gotten a haircut
–asked people to add to the list
–rewritten my About Leah page so people who come here for the first time don’t think I’m a loser for having a three-year-old “100 Things” list
–circulated my new sunglasses and taken more pictures
2006
Detox
I honestly don’t know what to say right now. “Overstimulation” is the secret word, so everybody SCREAM REAL LOUD but do it quietly so I can focus on my breathing. Here is a collaborative installation piece representing my brain on BlogHer:
Originally uploaded by .Ariel.
(Hmm…large space there…)
I’m home now, watching baseball with the cat, admiring the bracelet I was gifted for doing the AlphaMom interview, enjoying not having someone watching over my shoulder as I type, and trying not to think about the Baby Jessica Incident, which kept giving me sneak-attack giggle fits late into the night.
Even though I’m experiencing some major social burnout right now, I had a great time. I had the best roomies ever, and the few bloggers I knew before this weekend were even more awesome in person than they are online (I’m looking at you, Jennifer). I wish you all could have been there.
The experience was a homecoming, a new adventure, and a grand alienation, all at the same time. On the one hand, it was fantastic to meet in person people I already consider friends, and I got all warm and fuzzy when I stopped yakking long enough to be aware of how comfortably and naturally the conversation flowed. On the other hand, it was also great to hook up with people I’d never heard of and yet was able to talk to with ease because who in the blogosphere doesn’t have something to say about privacy issues and trolls and parents finding your online journal and what is an “authentic” voice and who we read even though they make us pull our hair and yell at the screen? On the other other hand, though, it’s challenging to meet people whose lives you’ve been following for months or years only to realize that they’re not who you thought they were. And who’s to say which persona is the more accurate–the online one or the conference panelist one or the drunken-by-the-pool at 2 a.m. one? As for me, I’ll let you know when you can click over to AlphaMom and see me in my Slightly Creepy Spaz in Front of the Camera Persona. Ugh. It was one of those times where I have everything all thought out but then I forget it all when I need to deliver the goods and instead spew forth either vapid and simplistic platitudes or complex entanglements of deep nonsense only to lie awake all that night thinking “I should have said this. I can’t believe I said that.” But as I told the smooth and gracious and flawless-looking-after-two-straight-days-of-craziness LeahPeah, it was about the experience more than about getting my mug on camera, so if all my tape ends up in the bin, that’s fine by me.
And speaking of the experience…I went to get my makeup done at 4:30 on Saturday, but when I got there, I was told that I’d have to wait because a last-minute special guest needed to get her makeup done first. So Andrea, Alice, and I wait around in the non-air-conditioned hallway until, behold, the heavens parted. Enter Arianna Huffington.
Beat.
She swept in, shook hands, told Alice she loved reading Finslippy, got her makeup taken care of, and then rushed off to deliver the closing keynote address. Alice and I stayed behind to get our pretty faces on after her, so people, my ass is only one makeup-stool degree away from Finslippy and two degrees away from Arianna Huffington, and I wonder if the makeup artist washed foundation brushes between canvasses, because if not, there might be some famous DNA on me right now.
It’s exhausting even thinking about it. It was wonderful, it was hectic, it was surreal. This morning at nine, Helen Jane and I rode down the elevator with Dooce and pulled out of the parking lot behind Arianna Huffington’s town car, and when stuff like that happens to just li’l old me, there really isn’t much more to say.
Oh, except there’s something special for Simon: My ass? Is zero degrees from Jennster; see the evidence here.
*Writing about this blogging conference is probably the most self-censorship I’ve experienced in my three years writing online. I also took way fewer photos than I would have if it had been any other kind of event. I found myself more than once thinking, “Oh, this is great blog fodder; my readers will love this” only to realize that everyone there could read the site address hanging from my neck and therefore nothing I wrote could remain “private.” And the worst part is that all the good gossip is only good gossip to people who read blogs, so it’s not like I could relieve the urge by telling my coworkers, “Oh, you won’t believe what Mary said about Brooke!” And yes, I’ve dropped a lot of names here, and yes, I ended up hanging around some of the Big Names just by their proximity to the few people I knew at the conference, and yes, that situation probably has a lot to do with why I didn’t take more pictures. Somehow, when taking pictures of regular people like you and me, everything is friendly and cool, but taking pictures of The Famous Ones reeks strongly of celebrity worship, even when there is no actual worshipping going on. Or just very little worshipping. Tiny pockets of worshippletts. But damn I wish I had taken more pictures because I had a few really cool shots set up in my head, like when I watched Sweetney‘s interview: Tracey and Leah in wicker chairs under the big, bright umbrella lights, the videographer and his equipment in the foreground, and Leah’s face three inches tall in the camera display screen. Ah, BlogHer06: It was the best of times, it was the most frustrating of times.
2006
Star-Spangled
If it had happened the way I thought it would, I would live-post from BlogHer a bunch of blurry, shot-from-the-hip photos of choice online celebrities who I was able to get within thirty feet of. But things aren
