Where I’ll Be

You know I love YouTube.  Have for a long time now.  Since before I started blogging.  In fact, my love for YouTube probably has more to do with me starting a blog than anything else.  I was like, “I want to do something!  Oh wait, I don’t have the editing skills or personality for video, but I know what I can do.  I can write.”

Back before YouTube even, I was a big fan of The Show With Ze Frank.  I’ve mentioned Ze here a million times before (see especially here and here), but I could go on forever.  I’ve actually considered that if a genie ever offered me three wishes, one of them would be for Ze to bring back the show forever.  I just don’t buy that all good things must come to an end.  If you’ve never watched The Show or if you have and it’s just been a while, please just spend a little time here. Then tell me thank you, then visit California, then buy me a beer and we can talk all about it.

The point I’m trying to get to is that this weekend I’ll be at VidCon.  VidCon is a conference in LA organized by the VlogBrothers and featuring all of my favorite YouTubers and, wait for it, Ze Frank!  It takes a lot for me to spend money while I’m trying to get out of debt, but as soon as Ze was on board, I was sold.

Now, I’ve been to a lot of conferences in the last several years, because here’s what no one told me about grad school: you will spend a huge portion of your time planning for and attending conferences.  Boring conferences.  Because even if you love the material, planning them is hell and you basically just get to watch people read papers they wrote.  This conference includes people I love, bloggers to meet, a ball pit, and a freaking dance party, which, let me just be honest, freaks me out because I don’t dance.  At least not well.  Or sober.

I had a thought last week and suddenly had to ask myself, “Wait, why am I going to this?”  I don’t expect to get much quality time with my favorites, I can watch YouTube clips of Ze speaking, and I really don’t care about networking since I’m pretty content to be a nobody on YouTube and in the blogosphere.”  Here’s my reason: to have fun.  I don’t do enough of that.  I’ll finally get to meet Pham and that’s another good reason to go; dude owes me a lot of Blue Moon.  (ETA: Actually met Pham last night.)

So, that’s where I’ll be this weekend.  Please ignore my excessive or complete lack of tweets, whatever the case may be.  If I say things like, “ZOMG. I just saw LisaNova,” you better know who Lisa is and be excited for me.  Or just fake it.  What will I know?