#2. “Pretend you know what you’re doing.” – Jenny Lawson. I already touched on this in a previous post, but during her panel, Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess) talked about being nervous during her book-on-tape recording. During a panic-filled moment, she tweeted at author Neil Gaiman (because you can do that when you’re famous) and asked for advice. He responded with the above quote. So really, I’m mis-attributing that quote in the image above. BUT, I heard the words coming out of Jenny’s mouth, so technically she said it, making the above quote not a lie. Logic. Anyway, this is similar to my long standing philosophy of “fake it til you make it,” which has always served me well in job interviews, exams, and pretending I know how to blog.
4. “Be brave, take risks.” – AB Chao. Oh man, I had such high hopes for AB Chao’s presentation “Fashion Forward: Five Ways to Change Your Life From the Outside In.” I had never heard of Chao but she apparently is a well known fashion and design blogger, and I have it on my Life List to “find my style.” Instead, her presentation was full of awkward moments where she belittled stripes as a fashion choice (“Stripes are SO out”), making me feel physically uncomfortable for anyone in the room wearing stripes (and it’s a blogger conference, so there were a lot), hated on collecting globes (I love globes and maps since I’m a geography fiend and hope to have a big vintage globe collection someday, besides, what does this have to do with fashion?), and laughingly admitted that she was using an image from someone else’s blog in her presentation and did NOT give the blogger credit. TO A ROOM FULL OF BLOGGERS. So, her presentation overall left me seeing red and certainly did not convert me into an AB Chao fan (you’ll note I am not linking to her blog here, because I don’t want to even give her any kind of referral traffic). But I did pull a couple meaningful things from her presentation, like the above reminder to “Be brave and take risks.” In the case of this presentation is was applied to fashion and design, but I would like to apply it to everything I do in life.
#5. “Don’t take on more than you can do well.” – Ken Germer. Well well well, this one is speaking directly to me, isn’t it? I often hear myself saying, “Yeah, I have four blogs, but I wish I had time to give them all the proper attention they deserve.” I often think that maybe I should just have ONE blog and devote all my love and attention to it and make it amazing, but at this point it’s like trying to choose between children. I love all my blogs and the hope is someday I will have the time to make them 100% where I want them to be. So for now I’ll just look at this advice and smile awkwardly, knowing I’m totally blowing it. Eh, nobody’s perfect.
