This one’s for you, Mom.
Jul 24th, 2008 by jenzug
Bryan has a reputation among our family and friends for making things happen with video and computers (he recently strapped a video camera to his life vest when we went white water rafting), so we received all sorts of requests for my reading to be recorded.
He sent me to BlogHer equipped with our Flip, and Kristin shot this video for me:
The most frequently asked question I heard was, “are you nervous?!” Honestly, I have to say I wasn’t. I had a rush of adrenaline as I waited for my turn, and maybe a little flutter in my chest as I prepared for the trip, but over all I felt pretty confident. Like I said before, speaking in front of a crowd is not what keeps me awake at night – especially when I’m just reading from a page. What made me more nervous over the weekend was having a single conversation over breakfast with a complete stranger. I’m so terrified of 1:1 conversation that I kept excusing myself to refill my coffee mug or find more pineapple.
But midway through Saturday I was even getting my networking groove on, and made some great contacts and met lots of new (to me) bloggers. I even got daring and tossed out a Tweet-up opportunity, risking breakfast with total strangers – ON PURPOSE. Laurie responded, and we ended up having a great time standing in line for an hour waiting for a great breakfast. I can’t say I would have been that patient alone, so having a couple bloggers to chat with while waiting spared me a mediocre breakfast somewhere else.
The whole experience was amazing, from receiving the announcement I’d be reading, to the curtain call at the end. Upon returning to normal life, fellow keynote reader, Schmutzie, twittered, “Someone run into my cubicle and call me adorable, STAT. I can’t take this lack of specialness a moment longer.”
I whole heartedly agree with that feeling. Thank you, again, Mrs. Kennedy, for opening the doors wide to the blogging community and giving us an opportunity show off what we can do.
Be warned: what you see here is not my best work. It is what Anne Lamott describes in Bird By Bird as a series of “shitty first drafts.” Blogging dragged me kicking and screaming out of creative constipation by getting me to actually write. So I do that. A lot. Without worrying about every word choice or comma placement.
Want to know more? Read my full 
Do you know what’s cool? The one co-worker who follows me on Twitter ran into my cubicle and told me I was adorable after that tweet.
Even funnier with you reading it! Way to go, Jen.
This is great! Even more funny hearing you read it than on paper (or screen).
Utterly grateful for that breakfast and to have met you. : )