I attended a female-powered blogger and business owner conference this weekend. The demographic and emphasis skewed towards female fashion bloggers with sponsors, ads and lots of photos of themselves in trendy clothes on their blogs. Clearly, I am not this type of blogger. I sought out the workshops that were less about getting free clothes and having eleventy-hundred followers; but more about consumerism with a conscience, parlaying blogging experience into freelance work, making your own earrings and seeking out the best venue for publishing.
I met several ladies with beautiful, unique style and sweet, radiant spirits such as Tolly, Sierra, Jenni, Chrystine Noel, Janette & Merl. I also met some high-school-style mean girls with overly trendy outfits copied straight from the retailer who oozed gimme, gimme, gimme attitudes and ruthless narcissism.
One gimme-girl saw the name of my retail employer on my badge, and her face lit up with the delight of opportunism. With little introduction, she thrust her business card at me and demanded an affiliate program sponsorship. Whoa there, Nelly!* That's not what I do. I just make the local store pretty. Even after I explained that I had no power to help her with her extremely lofty goal, she went on to threaten that if her one-month-old start-up didn't get an affiliate program sponsorship, she would no longer be able to showcase my employer's products. No, I'm not kidding.
I don't blog to get freebies, sponsorships or make money. I blog to keep in touch with family, friends, fans and frenemies. I blog to remember struggles, triumphs and ideas. I blog to exercise my brain and to exorcise some of the mental noise.
After a weekend of strutting in my most dangerous heels and least comfortable, but most stylish outfits, you do not want to see a photo of what I'm slumming around in today. Trust me, it's not pretty.
*Her name is not Nelly, though she did have a long mane of My Little Pony type hair. Uh-oh! Some of the high-school-style meanness rubbed off on me.