I met Joybird and it was a Happy girl's day

It's good to be home from my San Diego vacation.  Yesterday was a long day of travel.  I am so thankful for a non-stop coast to coast flight.  It sure made the travel day much easier.  I am also thankful for the white noise of a jet engine.  (Just sayin' parents of the SCREAMING 3 year old sitting behind me for 5 hours)  I don't know where to begin telling you what I enjoyed the most about this trip.  Just kidding...  I know exactly where I want to begin.  I met Joybird, from A Songbird in His Court.

Joybird came down to San Diego and we had a wonderful day together.  Joybird is the first blogfriend I have ever met in REAL life.  So, now we are REAL life friends.  I was nervous, but I had no reason to be.  My husband was so funny when I told him a fellow blogger was coming to our hotel and I was going out and spending the day with her.  He said, "What could go wrong?  It's Joybird and Happygirl going out on the town.  It's not like it's Mommy Dearest meeting the Wicked Queen."  Yeah, he was right.  We had a great day.  Joybird graduated from UCSD, so San Diego is her old stomping grounds.  She showed me places I wouldn't have found on my own and the joy in her voice as she relived the glory days of college and being young and having fun made it all the more enjoyable.

Besides the tour, it was so much fun to talk about blogging and what it means to us.  I think I had mentioned, in a comment on Joybird's blog, that we could be neighbors.  I could tell from her writing we were kindred spirits in blogging.  We both believe in sharing the heart of the subjects we write about on our blogs, but not the details.  It was so much fun to talk about how we think about what to write and why we write.  We are similar in the way we find blogging helps clarify our thoughts as we move through life.  We are different in that we are at different stages of our lives.  I'm not saying I'm old enough to be Joybird's mom, but I could have been if I had been a teen with loose morals and spotty birth control use.

I was able to share my blogging fears.  Fear surrounding the thoughts of the real life friends that read me and never say anything about what I've shared or those who tell me they're really not learning anything new about me or those who have change parts of their lives in reaction to something I've written.  I don't know which are easier to take?  It was so good to be able to commiserate on thinking of topics to write about.  I loved being able to share the process of thinking of things in a more positive way and how this process is changing the way I think about life.  I'm sure I talked way more about myself than I should have, but making this connection opened the floodgate of sharing I've been needing.

I learned Joybird is one authentic blogger.  I really did find so much I've learned about her through her blog is really who she is.  Her love of Our Lord is something that is as natural a part of her being as breathing.  I admire that so much.  Her authenticity in her writing inspires me to check my own truthfulness in my feelings about situations in my life.  We talked about how we need to FEEL deeply about something to write about.  I know, for myself, those posts that seem to resonate most with people are those posts I shared more of my emotion on the subject.

We talked about blogger conventions.  I see how going to events like this can be so useful to bloggers.  I learned much about the technical aspects of blogging from Joybird.  She gave me some very useful tips.  I'm going to implement some of her suggestions, immediately.  One of them was using Photobucket.  I need to start using this right away.  Another was the test blog site.  SUCH a good idea.  I'm not going to share the details, but, yeah, the test site is good both artistically and psychologically.  :)

Joybird and Happygirl

Yeah, we are two good looking women.