I owe a major apology to everyone I made fun of or rolled my eyes at when they started talking about BlogHer’10 AGAIN. Like, GOD, come ON, it’s just ONE WEEKEND out of your life, WHY do you need to KEEP talking about it ALL THE TIME? I now realize the error of my ways. Going places and doing things is fun, even if you do spend the entire week before waking up at 5 am in a panic that you will forget your camera or the hotel will have lost your reservation or that every single person you meet will give you the “pregnant or fat” once over and decide “no, just fat”. It’s exhausting and totally thought-consuming and I am smack dab in the middle of it.

Right now I am probably hauling my pregnant butt through an airport somewhere, pinching myself and trying to comprehend just what it was that fooled ANYONE into thinking I deserved to attend a conference as cool as The Creative Connection. I will be making sparkly things and listening to some of the most amazing women speak and sweating through my shirt with nervousness and generally having a totally amazing time. I may even get up the courage to hand out a business card or two, although it’s probably better if none of the super-talented, cool, artsy people ever find there way over HERE.

It would have been even better if I didn’t put the word “crap” on my business cards.

Or the words “bodily fluids”. But hey, hindsight is 20/20 right?

And just because my mom asked me to post it, here’s the 250 word essay that won me my scholarship:

How will attending the Creative Connection Event impact your creativity and/or creative business?

Creativity has always been something I thought was innate. Either you were a creative person or you weren’t – and I definitely wasn’t. I can’t draw to save my life, my poetry sounds like “There once was a man from Nantucket”, my paintings look like they were done by a first grader and as far as style goes…let’s just say I fall somewhere between a 5 -year-old and my grandmother.

But then I did create something, the most amazing something ever, the kind of something that changes your whole life from the second you see those two pink lines. After my son was born in April 2009 I realized creativity isn’t about talent, it’s about the love of making things, whether those things are stories or clothes or art or music or feelings. I stopped being afraid to create and took up knitting and photography and cooking and writing and loved every second of my triumphs and laughed over my mistakes. I learned when you create things you also create joy.

Attending the Creative Connections Conference would be an amazing opportunity to expand my creativity and learn new ways to be joyful. The chance to network with so many amazing and talented women would be a great opportunity for me as a blogger and as a person learning more about her creative side, as untalented as that side might be.

Tags: creativity, happiness, internet, knitting, lark crafts, TCC, things I love