Well if you follow me on instagram or twitter you probably noticed that I made a trip to Philly to attend the Blog Connect Conference that was put on by none other than Chrystina of Chrystina Noel. This lady always impresses me, she’s like an energizer bunny just going, going, going, and checking things off her list as she goes. Seriously she balances a full time engineering job, a blog, a greeting card shop, planning PHL Bloggers meetups, and now a conference?! Man I’m lucky if I have clean laundry between work and blogging.
Needless to say I was pretty exhausted when I got home on Sunday afternoon, but it was so worth it. I was super stoked to be there to help her out and learn some stuff, but never expected to meet so many completely awesome and amazing people too. I could gush for the rest of the post about some of the awesome people that I met, but I’ll spare you for now and talk about the conference itself.
We arrived at Saxby’s headquarters at 8 to start setting up, and guests started showing up around 9. I just want to take a moment to mention how freaking awesome the location was. The room looked like something out of a movie scene, so bright, chic and hip. It was way to cool for the likes of me. After registration, and getting headshots done by Mountain Gap Photography (omg I’m so excited about this, but seriously girlfriend needs a tan) we got to enjoy some bagels, coffee and tea while meeting new people and digging through our goodie bags.
I’m not going to go into detail about all the speakers and sessions, but I loved them all and had pages of notes when all was said and done. The only thing is that with multiple sessions going on I had to make some choices, but I really wish I was able to attend them all.
I left the conference with a lot of ideas and new knowledge as well as hopefully some awesome new friends. Now the big task is finding time to implement it all.
All in all I’m super happy that I went to this conference, and would really love to attend more. I cannot explain how exciting it is to talk to people who actually understand what you are talking about when you talk blogging. Seriously just that camaraderie is enough to make me go back for more.
On a slightly different note. . .
Something kind of huge happened at The Blog Connect Conference, and at the time it seemed so small but as the day’s rolled by this one thing that Michael from Click.Go.Review said kept popping into my head. He said something like “If you are passionate about it you should write about it”. It’s a duh statement but it was the context that hit me we were talking about gardening and hunting, and where my family gets much of their food from and the thing that struck me is that he recognized that just by talking to me for 5 minutes I am super passionate about it.
Here’s the thing I know I’m passionate about the homesteader/foraged and hunted lifestyle that we lead but I really never knew how to write about it. Where do I start? Chuck and I are still learning how to do these things ourselves, how do I, as an armature tell you guys how to butcher a goose?
I take my own advice and just start. I heard myself saying that so often to people when they asked me about gardening; just give it a shot, start small, but start. That’s what you have to do. That’s what I have to do. I have to remember that this year for me is about being BRAVE.
Transitioning my blog to be more about the things that I am actually passionate about terrifies me. I mean do you guys really want to know about venison marrow and duck gizzards, and growing mushrooms in my closet? Ahem, yeah these are things we actually talk about like it’s completely normal. I feel like everyone is going to run for the hills as these things start popping up more, but I’m going to do it anyway. Don’t worry there will still be plenty of recipe posts, crafts, and daily life sprinkled in, because really I’m not about conforming anyway. Just stick with me for a little while through all of this and I’m hoping that by this time next year we are both super happy about the place this blog has gone.