Sunday, January 30, 2011

i may be small but i am mighty.

I have come to realize that I live two separate lives. There is my day to day "real" life where I am a mom, a wife, a daughter, an employee and a friend.   There is also my web existence where I don my fickle feline superhero costume and fly into the online ether.
Balancing the two can be tricky.  I love my life.  I have a terrific family that I adore.  Friends who belly dance and quilt with me.  A job that while not my dream job, pays the bills and is close to home.  This real life feeds my online persona.  It is my day to day experiences that I draw on to fuel my existence as fickle feline.  When I suit up (or log on) I feel an internal shift within me.

This past week I spent 3 days as fickle feline at the Blissdom Conference in Nashville.  It was awesome and weird and fun and thought provoking all rolled into one big ball of emotions.  I got to meet people that I have only ever known as their online identity (some of them equal to Mrs.Incredible and Wonder Woman in stature).  I realized that no matter how popular someone is online (determined by hundreds of thousands of twitter followers and millions of page views), when they are standing next to me in line for coffee, we are very much equals.
I met BrenĂ© Brown and learned that she too has felt less than fantastic about her appearance, she too has had flashes of panic about putting herself out there.  And she is still GREAT.  I met Karen Walrond, the author of The Beauty of Different and listened to her speak about having to do an internal check of her core values when writing her blog and keeping her online life and her real life completely separate.  And she is the personification of real beauty.  I sat on the floor with Maggie and Amy and talked with them about the challenges of running their own businesses and how they plan to grow while still staying true to the reason they started in the first place.  They both took the leap and are their own bosses. Everywhere I turned I was surrounded by women challenging themselves to live and love with their whole hearts.  For a few short days we all took off our super hero masks and capes and shared of ourselves in a way we cannot in our day to day lives.

It was a reminder of something I have known for a long time - we are all more the same than we are different.  That holds true in all facets of life.  My challenge now is to find a way to make this type of  connection more often, online and in day to day life.  It is easier to be vulnerable as fickle feline than it is as Katrina.  I can be both and be enough, either way.  

8 comments:

  1. I love this, so well describes so many parts of what is odd and beautiful about being a blogger in a community. SO sad to have missed a chance to see you as both Fickle Feline and Katrina!

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  2. Deb - one day we will meet!! Are you going to any of the smaller conferences this year? Not sure I am up to BlogHer this year...it's getting a little too big for me.

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  3. SEXAY DRESS! And very true words.

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  4. This exact thought—we are all the same, more or less—is what helped me when I went to my first blog conference, BlogHer in Chicago (and it was only 1500 people back then, not nearly as ginormous as it is now).

    For better or worse, I am the same person online as offline. Hmmm. Gotta go ponder that.

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  5. so so nice to spend time w you! xo

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  6. Anonymous11:51 a.m.

    so great that you could go to the conference. were you able to get sponsored, with all of your expenses around Max's therapy?

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  7. @joanne - you are too kind!

    @Ellen - I think that's a good thing!

    @amy - ditto!

    @anon - I booked my flight on points - wasn't able to get a sponsor (they like the bigger bloggers, I am a small fish in a big ass pond)

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  8. Anonymous6:19 a.m.

    Dear Kat,
    You are hot!
    Love A. xo

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