i'm headed to #altsummit!

Ladies and gentlemen, you can mark down yesterday as the day I decided to finally put my big girl pants on! 

I have come a long way from starting this little ol' blog just about one year ago. My dreams for doing something creative with my life have gone from being just that - a dream - to a hobby and now something more like a goal (ie. something foreseeably attainable). One day I would love to make a living off of some sort of creative business - be it writing, making or conceiving SOMETHING. But the truth is, I've been too afraid to take the steps to get there.

Not anymore. I'm taking the plunge!

Last year I was following a friend of mine on Twitter and she kept posting these amazing pictures from an event called #AltSummit (or Altitude Design Summit). She was there for work and was tweeting pictures of a panel she was attending where Ben Silbermann, founder of Pinterest, was speaking. Um.... if you know me at all, you know what a geekerific celebrity moment this was for me. (Little did I know I'd get my own moment when I saw a live Q&A with him in Austin at SXSW a few months later. So cool!)

After doing some link chasing, I determined that Alt Summit was this massive blogging conference. But this wasn't your mother's blogging conference (what does that even mean?) This was a blogging conference with an emphasis on design. Wait, what?! Blogging. AND design. There's a thing for that? How did I live without the knowledge of this event!

All the greatest creative minds in blogging from fashion to DIY to interior design to styling to cooking to crafting were under one roof, meeting each other, and making stuff together. Wowza, I thought to myself. I have to get there. 

So for months and months I just checked back in, waiting to hear about when tickets would go on sale....

And then I forgot about it. (This should not come as a surprise to any of you.)

Luckily, however, the universe wanted desperately for me to go to this conference (thank you universe for having a better memory than the one you gave me!) because last week I receive this serendipitous little Facebook post.

(Quick aside: Who is Madalyn? I'm glad you asked! She's a wonderfully creative and gloriously inspired fellow geek that happens to be a friend of my older brother's from way back when. However, when she realized that my brother was not a fan of a) design or b) social media or c) really anything girly and geeky, we became fast friends too! I also have this theory about knowing whether I'll get along with someone solely on the quality of their pins, and let me tell you, this girl pins up a STORM and finds the most dazzling things. Follow her on Pinterest here or check her out over at M. Design!)

Anyway, after a chat over coffee this past Monday, she told me all about her experience at Alt last year and convinced me that it was worth the investment. Which brings me to my next point... the investment.

Tickets to this conference are NOT cheap. $500 a pop, to be precise. Which, when you put that together with hotel and plane ticket, is a HUGE chunk of change. And honestly, given my financial situation, it would have been easy to use money as an excuse not to go to this thing.

But then I thought about it... would it be the money or would it be the fear holding me back? Maybe I'm just afraid that if I make such a big investment, I'll have to actually take what I learn at Alt and the experiences I have and do something really scary... use it! After much internal uneasiness, I determined that this is something I have wanted for a long time, and it's something I'm doing completely for myself and to get closer to my dreams. So really there's no better thing in the world to spend money on, right? Right. (Oh, and it's in Salt Lake City which I have never been to so that kind of sealed the deal for me.)

Thankfully I've been saving up some money for a while now which I'll be dipping into to cover the ticket cost. That, plus the fact that my plane ticket will be FREE with Delta SkyMiles (bless you Delta) and the fact that I have someone to split my hotel room with, was enough for me to bite the bullet and buy my ticket.

And you know what? I'm sure glad I did because THE ENTIRE CONFERENCE SOLD OUT IN 35 MINUTES. I know. RIDICULOUS. Apparently last year it took about a month or so but I think word has gotten out about what an amazing experience it is so the demand is higher. I'm just so, so grateful that Madalyn wrote that post on my wall, that my friend tweeted about it all those months ago, and that I had the guts to finally do something BIG.

I don't know what will come out of Alt Summit but I know at the very least I am guaranteed to learn a lot and walk away inspired. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll turn this little blog into something great someday. Who knows!

Anyway, I'll be posting periodically about the process leading up to Alt Summit because there is a lot that I want to do before I go meeting all these creative minds in January in SLC. This includes finishing my blog redesign (only three more pages to go! I cannot WAIT for you guys to see it!), opening my Etsy shop, and new biz cards to hand out while I'm there.

Hooray for big girl pants!

// Have you ever been to an event or conference that has changed your world? Have you ever heard of Alt Summit? If you're going, let me know in the comments below so I can say hello! //