LaurieWrites

Some of my best friends are mom bloggers

I met Laura Mayes a few years ago. It was probably because of Laurie Smithwick, who plucked me drunken from a curb (me, not her, obviously) in front of a Chicago hotel at BlogHer and said hey, we oughta know each others' phone numbers, because she is a take-charge kind of woman who has been nominated for a Grammy award and I am a name-dropping ass who likes to tell you how cool my much-cooler friends are like twice a year. 

 And then I ended up in a limo with the Kirtsy girls talking smack about mythical cameras and that was that. 

[This is the actual night of the curb and the number, etc. Photo unapologetically ripped from Sarah Goon Squad Sarah's Flickr. That's Sarah between two Lauries. There are worse fates, honestly. I love this picture so much. It makes me happy just looking at it. That was a kickass BlogHer and these are two of my favorite people in the world.] 

So that was how I met Laura Mayes. I think. But for all of the specifics that I don't know, what I can say from the first time I met her was that when Laura entered a room, any time, I felt better about things in general. She has this smile and all-around vibe and approach to things that makes me feel like "Hey world, check this out. This is all going to be okay." 

Or, as she herself is often prone to saying, "This is rad." Or, more to the point, it could be. It could be pretty fucking rad, if we let it. WHY ARE WE NOT LETTING IT BE RAD, EXCUSE ME? Except I say the eff word and maybe she doesn't. Bygones. 

So last year I pitched a panel to Laura for Mom 2.0 that I thought was weird but would totally work and she liked it. I remember talking to her about it while I drove from Virginia into North Carolina and the conversation meandered into good places and I probably cut her off about three times because AT&T on 95 is a nightmare plus there were state troopers everywhere and I couldn't remember the phone laws in the states I was in, but she'd just keep calling back. And so I went to Mom 2.0 in Houston and had a better time than I'd had in memory and that was that.

Weiner Mobiles. Taco trucks. Social media/writing learnin'. Pictures. Galleries. And then I got to go back this year and talk about cameras. 

Look, I am not a mom. I am not a mom at all awash in a beautiful sea of women who write on the internet who are moms, and I can't rightly explain how that happened either, except that I write on the internet and I'm a woman and the group of people I've found who do the same have generally produced or acquired a child, as women (especially) just shy of or at or past 40 are prone to doing. 

And that is a vague way of explaining why I go to to Mom 2.0. 

I think Mom 2.0 is one of the best events in the blogging world. I don't care where it is. It could be in a church basement in {insert name of city I don't want to offend} and it would kick all manner of ass, because you know what? French Quarter (I love you New Orleans) or downtown Houston or {HELL YEAH} Miami resort? Mom 2.0 attracts women and a few dudes who do some of the coolest things that are happening on the world wide internet web who also happen to be your girls who will walk back alleys with you and crack up laughing and drink and dance but are also determined to stay with you to make sure you find your damn phone that you drop on the floor of a bar and you're sure is gone but holy hell if the dj doesn't have it when you crawl back in shame to ask. (Thanks Amie. You really are one of the best there is.) 

We need to find these people.

We needed to find them when we were little girls and (god help us) when we were in high school and college and certainly now when we are supposed to be grown-ups with ideas and plans and certainties. We need friends and colleagues and mentors and associates, especially in a media/communications/writing world that is changing at lightning speed every minute.

We need people who give us benchmarks and opinions and places for our ideas to sit at tables and take shape. We need people to help us figure out our businesses and our relationships and where we are to meet for dinner. We need people who will tell us we are good at what we do when we are, and maybe (especially) when we're missing the mark so we can fix it. 

This event is still small enough for this to happen, I promise you. It's relaxed enough for it to  seem possible, and it's cool enough to give us the  venues in which to accomplish this while still feeling happily removed from our workaday circumstances. 

It's rad.  You should go next year. 

*****************************

This year, the following people and experiences made my Mom2.0 experience especially rad: 

Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah, who makes everything more fun, who babysits me on planes when I honestly think I'm going to die every time, but especially this time if I don't get to sit with her because that has to be some kind of sign of impending death (flying anxiety is no joke, y'all), and without whom, well, you know I really just don't know. 

The Dads, particularly BetaDad, Whit Honea and the Muskrat, plus Yvonne and Miss Britt, with whom I tagged along on Thursday night in the Quarter, one of the most fun nights I've had in a very, very long time. 

(Extra special thanks to Whit, Sarah and BetaDad for the beauty of "I'm going to pull the fire alarm... DO IT NOW" plus beer at the keynote, because that was one of the best things of all conference time.) 

Janet. I love Janet. And the rest of those miscreants named above plus Faiqa who went on the awesome PBS Kids Jazz tour, which ended at Preservation Hall where I geeked out hard, and got a little crush on the bandleader who knew pretty much everything about jazz off the top of his head and managed to impart it in a manner in no way as annoying or pedantic as my ex-boyfriend. 

Maile, who is one of the kindest, most talented people I know, and with whom it was a privilege to lead our photo workshop. 

Deb, proprietress of Deb on the Rocks, who laughs at the stupid shit I say like she's not seven million times funnier. It spoils me to have her a hotel floor away, and to get to sit with her at lunch and soak up her words and ideas. 

Shannon, who is one of the best friends I've got who I've seen in person thrice, and with whom I finally got to watch a hockey game, at least on tv. 

Our blog reader and friend Marissa, who met Sarah and me uptown on Sunday and who is just lovely and kind. I'm so glad we got a chance to connect with you because that was a real highlight. 

Three Community Coffee travel mugs to bring home for me and my parents -- best trip gift ever that I didn't have to buy, and my parents are frequent New Orleans visitors who are in their coffee club, so I was ethical and everything! Thanks, Community Coffee. I will continue to drink you all of the time. 

Meeting people whose work I admire and who I've gotten to know on Twitter but never in person -- Marinka, Wendi Aarons, Stacy Morrison, Doug from Laid Off Dad (who will be bringing you Dad2.0 next year.) Seeing Kyran for just a few minutes and hearing her read from a book I first saw in very raw form and it was wonderful then, so I know it will be amazing when I finally get my hands on it now. The conversations with these people were very helpful to me this time out -- hearing what people are working on, what they're writing, how they're hoping to shape it. That was good for me. 

As far as programming, this may sound crazy, but the Oprah video at the end made me cry and think and question what the hell it is I'm doing in general and online -- what it's been and could be and what I need to do to make that happen. I'm not a wholesale fan of hers, really, and I'm not saying I co-sign everything she said, even in that clip. But as a woman without kids at a conference designed for moms, her statement about being a woman without her own children who nonetheless felt called to teach and lead carried a lot of weight with me. I did not make the conscious choice that she did to remain childless. My life has moved in different ways that have made that my reality, and in a lot of ways it's my central struggle, what my legacy can be besides that. What my purpose is, if it's not to be a mom and in a family structure, and it's my job to figure out how to manage that without going insane, to determine what to say, how, and for what purpose. 

And for some reason that video of Oprah talking about similar things put me in the right space to contemplate that. 

I love New Orleans. For all its crazy I love my blogging life and the people who are in it with me. So it was lovely to be in that place with some of my best friends and favorite new people, trying to figure all of this out for the next phase. I carried that away with me, flying out over Lake Ponchartrain into a life where I don't know at all what is going to happen next, except I did know for sure that I had a hell of a good time at Mom 2.0.

(It was, indeed, rad. Thanks, Laura. You're the best queso who ever queso'd.) 

On forgetting whether or not I ever told my blog that I danced to I'm Every Woman with Jane Fonda.

Seriously. 

I'm going through my photo archives for another day in a row, putting together some images for a friend of mine, and wow. The things you don't really forget but don't actively remember. Like this: 

That's my mother on the far right in this one. She looks like we all felt.

 

This is what happens when you follow Dylan McDermott into the W hotel in New Orleans because you figure that's where the party is because his stepmother just happens to be throwing it. And then somehow you end up in the party yourself (**coughpresspasscough**) standing a few feet away from an open bar and Rosario Dawson. 

 

 Dudes this is still funny, almost two years later.

 

That will never not be funny to me. That ain't no On Golden Pond. 

I have no idea what I said exactly to get us in those doors but I will never be sorry. Like Ferris said, life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. 

Whole set here. Fabulous trip.