Friends, Romans, Bloggers
This weekend saw another epic trip to the wonderful blogger conference that is BlogOn. Fortunately the journey itself wasn’t quite as epic this time around as instead of it being in Machester this time the event was in sunny Bracknell, a massive 20 minutes down the road from me!
I could write a whole post about how great the event itself was. After all, it had excellent talks on a range of subjects, another amazing raffle full of brilliant prizes, a brand den jam-packed with all the best of the new toys hitting the shelves this Christmas, epic goody bags and more competitions and games than you could shake a stick at. Laura and Alice et al always do an amazing job of organising BlogOn and this year was definitely no exception!
But this post will be all about the most important thing about BlogOn. Friendship!
Blogging can be a funny thing. You sit behind a computer or a phone and type away on your own. You then press publish and your work of literary art goes floating off into the ether to be read by friends, family, strangers, or maybe no one at all!
As bloggers you don’t have any colleagues as such. No one sitting at the desk next to you to talk things through or to chat about what you did at the weekend. No one to walk to the sandwich shop with. And no one to go out for drinks with after a long day at work.
So a lot of blogging friendship and support and advice comes through the limited joys of social media. And although being internet friends is fine, it’s no substitute for real human interaction, which is why blogging conferences and social events are sooooooo important.
It’s the one big chance to come together and actually talk to people who enjoy doing the same thing that you do – writing! And yes, some of us do it to make some money – pay the bills, feed the kids and all that jazz. Important things. But the one big thing we all have in common is the love of writing.
Writing gives you the opportunity to make other people feel stuff. To make people cry, or laugh or just think about things. And blogging conferences give you the opportunity to talk to other people who enjoy doing that too. People who get a kick out of other people reading what they write.
I’ve always felt a strong connection with creative people and at BlogOn there were 200 of those such people, including a good smattering of folks that I’ve made really good friends with over the past 3 years or so of doing this blogging thing.
They’re good people. Some of them drink a lot. Some of them swear a lot. Some of them dance to awful, awful music. Some of them refuse to dance to awful, awful music, which is even worse! Some of then wear silly festive hats in September.
Some of them are massive oversharers, which is kind of a prerequisite for this blogging lark. But with chronic over-sharing comes awesome conversations, lots of laughter, and a really great weekend catching up with friends and making new ones.
So although BlogOn itself is awesome and fun and educational it’s the drinking, chatting, dancing and having fun with all those awesome, over-sharing, writers that is the main reason I keep going back time after time. It makes me want to write more and it’s good for the soul!
I’m very much looking forward to the next one already!
However, if you’re a blogger who can’t wait until next year and enjoys meeting up with other bloggers and, ideally, enjoys a drink and a dance why not join our little social group here.