I... Am Going... To Chicago!!!

I have been blogging since July 31, 2004. The reason I started was to just dump my thoughts, on a web page, turning my usual train-of-thought processes into something a little more tangible. It was an opportunity to bleed. It was something that I suppose, knew, as a concept, others could read, but thought, "Really... who the fuck would read my shit?" I mean, this is just my little life and my little thoughts that I'm putting down on a page that doesn't offend me in a design sense. I've never had a personal website before, and it seemed like a pretty cool thing to do.

So I began.

I wrote about my hopes. I wrote about my fears. I wrote about the stupid family stuff I was subjected to but learned to see through their thinly sheathed motives. I wrote seemingly endlessly about boys. I wrote about embarrassing stuff. I wrote about my real boyfriend (music). I wrote about political stuff. I wrote about funny stuff. I wrote about the stuff that pisses me off. I wrote about the sweetness that surrounds me.

I wrote about me.

One day, I learned to upload pictures, a task not made instantly simple as I'm on a Mac platform, not a PC, but I found a way. I titled one my entries: Turnstile. I wanted to find a picture online, which I did. It was beautiful. I had no idea it was an installation and I certainly didn't realise it was by the respected artist Germaine Koh.

A young lady who currently resides in California, originally from Canada's capital city, wrote to me saying nice things, told me about the artist and we began a nice dialogue. Sometimes she gives me valuable advice and other times she shares some of her ideas and thoughts. This young lady is grumblecakes.

Another day I was writing about a band, copying and pasting their lyrics and blabbing about why I dig guys in their 20's. A young man commented by saying nice things about what I said in my About Me section. Since comments are linked to the user, I launched his profile and subsequently his blogspot and read the most charming, delightful, hilarious bits of business. Thus Jason was born in my life.

Curious by nature I checked out who young Jason considered friend, in this realm. I get taken to a Minima Black template filled with a darker than the screen, sardonic, tragic prose musings and poetry, full of humanity and suffering. With bursting heart, I discovered WorkingNob.

Apparently I have a tendency to go on and on in a comment posting and got sort bitchslapped for being a bit too verbose in my statements to the aforementioned lad. This high-spirited minx, who busts me and conversely loves me, is Sergeant Fun.

I think about these people all the time. They enter into conversations I have with people daily. They are often the first thing I think about in the morning. They are a consideration when I post things in my blog. I know they will read it. Read this.

Soon we all started regularly reading and commenting on each other's blogs.

Lives.

I believe we all speak things in this realm that
A) we don't have the time for in the Real World and
B) we don't have the right people to share these things with.

And the interesting thing is we absolutely support one another. By support, I don't mean that we just gratuitously praise one another. We give each other props, sure, but we give each other shit as well. We challenge each other. Sometimes there's guidance. Other times it's complete understanding. Suddenly we are no longer alone.

Suddenly we have a community.

I was just looking up "community" through dictionary.com. I liked the 5th definition, one borne of ecology:
"A group of plants and animals living and interacting with one another in a specific region under relatively similar environmental conditions."

Specific region: well... the whole of North America.
Relatively similar environmental conditions: well... kind of fucked up.

Jason was commenting on one of Sgt. Fun's blogs last week. The comment was in reference to a picture a friend sent to her. Jason lives in Arizona where at 10pm it's 70ºF outside. He misses the changing seasons. I would too. That, to me, is one of the best things about living in Toronto. That comment inspired the Sarge to suggest there be a Blogger Reunion of sorts. It's not that we were once physically together and then separated. We've never physically met.

The thing is these people know me more than most people do. I really feel I know them in much the same way. There is no need for a physical being sometimes. Sometimes there's enough spirit left on a page.
Through the interactions I've had with these people I've become happier. Single but not alone. There's a certain amount of brainspace that is occupied with thoughts of them. I worry about them. I wonder about them. I cheer for them.

We're meeting in January in Chicago. I've only been to Chicago once and I had a marvellous time. I remember Samuel Adams beer, running up and down the field alongside the pre-season Bears during an exhibition game pretending to be a journalist, but all the while writing, "This is the best day of my life", in the little book I was carrying. I remember feeling it was Oprah's town; how everyone was working and happy to be working. I remember great service. I remember Happy Hour and the best crab cakes ever. I remember a seedy hotel room with a flashing neon sign outside the window; I can still hear the electrical sound it made everytime it flashed on. I remember the El and how I liked walking underneath the trains in the middle of the city. I remember their "bad" neighbourhoods weren't THAT bad.

I'm so excited about going.
I can't wait to meet them.
There are times that this phrase just flies out of my mouth, "I... am going... to Chicago!!!"

I told my boss yesterday that I needed some time off in January.
He said, "What day is it?"
I asked, "Today?"
"Yeah", he said.
"Oh... okay, well... just wanted you to know... (mutters 'asshole' under her breath)."

And of course everyone I've told thinks I'm nuts for doing this. But, for me, there is zero retiscence, and absolute and total enthusiasm over the whole thing.

I... am going... to Chicago!!!