I could not have asked for a better send-off from the US. I leave for France in three days and in addition to the flurry of excitement surrounding my departure prep, I am still reeling from how fantastic my weekend was.

In my year of basement-dwelling, teaching, and becoming a gym rat, I have never failed to be amazed by the sense of community that I have found among fellow bloggers. My best adventures this year have involved travel and epic bloggers. Flying across the country to hang with ninjas and party with a styrofoam head? Driving to the middle of a corn field to spend the weekend in the home of someone I had never met offline? Best. Life. Choices. Ever.

When 20sb announced its first summit in Chicago, I knew I had to go. An opportunity to go hang out with blogger friends in one of my favorite cities? Sign me up.

I got in on Thursday night after an epic battle with the traffic fairies who were being wretched to me. Exhaustion be damned, I got to meet the lovely Lor and her friend Penny that night. Lor is one of my closer friends online or off (and not just because she is a fellow lady of snark) so getting to actually meet her in person was pretty amazing.

Confession: I was a bit weary at first. Leading up to the event, we kept referring to it as Bloggy School, and mostly I did not mean that in a good way. I was concerned that it would be a lot of “This is how you monetize everything and also get the most money when you decide to sell your soul.” I also get a little eye-rolly about life coachy things (it’s perfectly acceptable to turn all words into adverbs by adding a y and I refuse to let you tell me otherwise. OOH GRAMMAR. OOH THAT’S NOT HOW ENGLISH WORKS. Whatever.)

After the all around awesome that was the kick off party, I showed up a little run down and a little late for the Saturday morning keynote speech but determined to keep an open-mind. (As Lor points out, we totally walked in front of the cameras and then tried to melt into our chairs.) The thing I kept hearing in the back of my head was that it would serve me no benefit (while probably actually hindering my experience) to be a cynical asshole about everything. #lifelessons.

There are about a thousand amazing stories I could tell about this weekend and all of the fabulous people I got to hang out with. From karaoke to bonding with people who love glitter as much as I do (and love cats as much as I don’t, but that’s also a story for another time), it was all-around successful.

Once I changed out of my sassy pants (kidding — they are the only pants I wear; like an attitude-clothing tattoo of some sort) got over myself, I had a blast being around people who, at the risk of being a big heaping ball of cheese: made me laugh and think. I know, you want to punch me in the face for that. It’s cool, I do too, but I meant it and I’ll take the abuse. Except not the face — I have Parisian boys to woo, all right? Go for the arm or something.

One of the things that I think I have found so comforting about this community is feeling that I found all of these other people who had no idea what they were doing. I get this great reminder that I am not the only one who is making it up as I go and it turns out that these people I found are all awesome. I know I am in good company.

I had grand plans to record a big epic vlog, complete with video from the karaoke adventure (yeah, it happened), but I just don’t have that kind of time. Did I mention that I leave in three days? That’s for my benefit. HEY THERE, YOU ARE LEAVING IN THREE DAYS. YOU SHOULD PROBABLY PACK A SUITCASE OR SOMETHING. If I weren’t filled with shame, I’d take a picture of my room to show you how my life appears to have exploded there.

So thank you to everyone else who stayed out way too late and got up at stupid AM to go hear amazing speakers. Thank you for crowding around the coffee with me and for being a member of team hungry bloggers, flooding the #20sbsummit feed and the panels themselves with the sounds of our stomachs. (AND THANK YOU FOR FEEDING US DELICIOUS FOOD, REWARDING OUR IMPATIENCE.)

Part of my wish to vlog came from the fact that two of the panels made me think, “VLOGGING IS THE BEST IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF EVER.” Listening to people talk about what prompts them to say the things that they do makes me feel so much more normal for obsessing over things like that. I am having a hard time deciding which of the million thought gems deserve repeating partially because the answer is ALL OF THEM and partially because I spent the weekend just wanting to follow everyone around and hear every single thing that they said. (Why yes, I am a giant creeper!)

DShan ended his closing remarks with “That’s a wrap,” and the entire room stayed still. None of us were ready for it to end.

On Sunday the amazing Jenny Blake said countless things that made even this little brat go, “OMG YES I AM GOING TO GO TAKE OVER THE WORLD. ALL OF THE WORLD AND ALL OF THE THINGS BECAUSE WE ARE ALL JUST SO AWESOME AND LET’S JUST ALL GIVE EACH OTHER HUGS, K?” She pointed out that we all have a bigger network than we realized, filled with people who are determined not to let us fail. I have to say that between my family and friends, I keep getting reminders that this is true. That is incredibly vague because some of the specific things aren’t meant to be made public and it isn’t really the point. The point is that I’m just incredibly grateful. I am swimming in sparkly vibes from knowing that there are so many awesome people out there.

My endless happythankyoumoreplease will be replaced with actual stories from this amazing adventure (instead of annoying in-joke references that also make you want to maim me) and possibly even that hypothetical vlog post at a later date. It’s crazy to think that my next post will be brought to you from Paris. I can’t even wrap my head around that.

THANK YOU to 20sb and all of the people who participated in my last weekend in the US. It was perfect.

PS: Lor sent me the link to her post right as I was proofreading this and squirming with discomfort at the prospect of posting something so gushy and OMGHAPPYPANTSHUGSFOREVERYONE. It’s funny because she says just about everything I was thinking, but her post contains actual substance instead of me trying to bake cakes with rainbows and unicorns. This is the post I wish I would have written.

PPS: I was trying to link a different person for each word at the end there and then I got absolutely exhausted just thinking about it.