I attended my first blogging conference last July in Chicago: the BlogHer 2013. At the end of the 3-day conference, I’ll admit: my verdict on the conference was really ho hum. I mean, yes, I loved the keynotes, especially the talks by Ree Drummond and Sheryl Sandberg, but the sessions were really kinda hit or miss. Some were super chintzy with no real content/help. Others were too general. Yet there was no denying that BlogHer, with its 5,000 conference attendees, had community and critical mass. I decided to keep BlogHer on my radar.

In early September, after I launched Giddy Go, Cowgirl, it seemed like an obvious next step to join the BlogHer Network. I hadn’t really dug around the site too deeply, but 1) BlogHer actually has an office nearby in Belmont, so somehow being local made them more appealing and 2) I couldn’t help but be impressed by its massive aggregation (one-stop shop) of blogs. There was also something attractive about women bloggers supporting other women bloggers. What would joining the network do for me? I really had no idea. As it turned out, my blog needed to be up and running for 90 days before I could even apply to join. So fine, BlogHer went under the radar again.

Then at the end of October, BlogHer 2014 was announced to be in… San Jose! Yes, practically in my backyard, so I have to go again. Where am I going with all this in and out, on and off BlogHer activity? I don’t know, but I’m taking these steps one at a time. Normally, I would adopt a very all or nothing approach. Either go full force, guns ablazin’ or don’t even bother. But I’m trying a new paradigm. For now, curiosity is enough for me to take just one step forward. So I’m registered for BlogHer 2014 in July 2014.

Incidentally, late last night, I came across a tweet calling today (November 5) the last day to join NaBloPoMo, National Blog Posting Month. What is that? Several months ago when I was taking my Uncover Your Calling class, my coach had mentioned NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month where every day participants write a part for a novel that they complete at the end of the month. It sounded interesting, but eh, novel writing isn’t really my thing. But NaBloPoMo apparently sprung from this concept: write a blog entry once a day for 30 days. I’ve been meaning to write more frequently… and I remember that Ree Drummond credited her frequent, daily blogging and photographing to dramatically improving the caliber of her content.

So I signed up NaBloPoMo too. Yeah, I’m already late to the game being that the month started five days ago, but I’ll just start it from here and go until December 5. One post a day. How hard can this be, right? Haha. Who knows, maybe my daily meditations will finally start kicking in and new material will come to me quickly! Fingers crossed.