a visit to the blogosphere

I went to the blogging.la party tonight at the Golden Gopher downtown.

This required me to walk into a party of people I didn’t know, save for one – the colleague who co-founded Blogebrity. But that seemed to be a start. He introduced me to the Everyday Goddess and this guy, who in turn introduced me to the founder of blogging.la. Who then, upon hearing my interest in history, sent me over to meet the councilman for District 13, who, as it turns out, supports many wonderful city initiatives, and is definitely my hero for the day. Not only was he one of the most wonderful human beings I’ve met lately, but he was a fellow local historian, a fourth generation Angelino, and from my ancestral ‘hood of Boyle Heights, at that. (Boyle Heights was the old Jewish ghetto my grandparents moved to, when my mother was five, fifteen years before the I-5 freeway decimated the neighborhood.)

So I ended up having a really good time tonight, despite being terrified of being in a room of total strangers. I was so anxious about walking into a strange community of people that I almost didn’t go. After all, this wasn’t LJ, but a totally different community of “real” bloggers. And although many people assume that I’m outgoing, and that I can talk my way into any party, it still take a lot for me to get through that kind of situation. Usually, left to my own devices, I manage in strange social situations. It doesn’t mean I like it. I’m always afraid that I’m going to end up standing in a corner, twirling the straws of my drink, watching people shy away from me. And I tend to stutter when I’m nervous, which was really bad when I was the fat girl back at Oak Bay High. So maybe it’s shades of high school; maybe it’s just something everyone feels, but I’m glad I pushed myself to go. I met new people. I met interesting, smart nice people. I’m happy about that.

I suppose it helps that I did dress up for this event:

And yes, I dyed my hair – five-day red dye. It’s bright maroon in sunlight. Temporary quasi-indie.

And having the confidence of a cute outfit buys a lot of courage.

So that was this evening’s adventures in blog-land. I have a major rehaul of my writing empire to do – all the Los Angeles essays are going to have to shuffle off to a new domain with Typepad, although social and personal commentary will remain here. As I’ve said, I want to get into the L.A. blogging land, and I think I’d be relatively valuable as a Historic Los Angeles blogger, and that will require a serious upgrade.

In the interim, however, I do have the satisfaction of saying I’ve had a blog for almost ten years. THAT’S something that even the most famous of today’s crop of bloggers can’t claim. Ha. That and my seven digit ICQ number and my participation on alt-boards -slash- use of Lynx to do it pretty much set me as old-school Internet for life. Now, if I’d been out meeting people ten years ago like I was tonight, I’d never have gained that kind of ‘net cred.