Have you ever had one of those moments, an event actually, where you experience something completely and totally amazing and you want to share about it with everyone but when you sit down nothing coherent comes out?  All of your thoughts are crashing about, fighting to be the first in line.  And you’re just left saying things like…..

“It was awesome!  It was just so awesome!  Really, really, really….. just awesome!”
(I was told this weekend that “awesome” was an abused descriptive word and that we shouldn’t use it anymore.)

Coming away from the Arkansas Women Bloggers University Conference was like that for me.

I cannot sum up what this weekend means to me other than it has almost done the impossible….. It has made me open to the idea of hugging.  If you know me.  If you really and truly know me then you know that the phrase “touchy-feely” is not at the top of my list of characteristics.  Honestly it’s not even on the list.  Not even in the ink in the pen that might write the list.  But each year these women–this group of creative, supportive, beautiful, funny women make me open to the idea of a hug.  At least for the weekend “hugging” is on my list.

A list that also includes:

Laughing loudly

This was accomplished on many occasions by myself and others much to the detriment of those around us including but not limited to one would be Tevya from Fiddler on the Roof.

Dancing Spontaneously

The lobby music at the Embassy Suites Northwest Arkansas was just so wiggle worthy!

Occasional outbursts of childish abandonment

When you give a room full of bloggers and endless supply of rubber bands in all shapes and sizes, there is no way that seriousness can hold any ground.

But the biggest lesson that AWBU teaches me is that I am not an island.  As much as I want to be the hermit curmudgeon living in the woods, this community pulls me in like a tractor beam.  And I am powerless to fight it.  Nor do I really want to.

Dang it!