Great Expectations

In just over a month, I’m attending a blogging conference in Sydney where a group of about two hundred people will get to see what I really look like. Well, not what I really look like, because I’ll probably brush my hair or something, especially for the occasion.

For a while I contemplated going in disguise as someone called Stephanie who had a blog called “RAINBOWS! AND! LOLLIPOPS!” (Please note the creative use of exclamation marks). Either that, or hiring a body double with more shapely ankles and a better dress sense than me to attend in my place.

I also thought about wearing a KISS mask, which I could take off to reveal full KISS makeup. Which would be totally cool…  if about 30 years out of date.

See, the truth is I have some anxiety about not meeting the expectations people have of me – especially since I don’t know what those expectations are. I mean, what do those precious few people who read my blog who aren’t blood relations or currently involved in a lengthy court dispute with me think I look like? You know, other than extremely drunk.

I’ve been thinking about this even more since an incident on a weekend visit to Sydney,  where I randomly ran into fellow-blogger, twitter personality and all-round hottie Kerri Sackville on a train platform.

Kerri, to her full credit, recognised me immediately because she has the privilege of being my Facebook friend and thus having access to the trillion photos I post there and my deepest, most intimate thoughts about what I’m cooking for dinner and the price of bananas (“Bananas… WTF?”).

However, while I was initially sure it was her, I quickly became filled with doubt.

For one thing, the Kerri-in-my-mind was at least six feet tall, perhaps even seven. I’ve based this assumption on the few head shots I’ve seen of hers and the way she writes. There’s something about the lack of exclamation marks in her copy suggests stature. I’m sure there’s a scientific study somewhere to support this.

But the Kerri-on-the-platform, however, was positively elfin. Why, I wanted to pick her up and tuck her in my front pocket she was so petite.

So to cut a long story short, I ended up dissing this apparent Kerri-alike and continuing my train journey by myself.

Turns out, via the magic of twitter, it really was her (and, it should be noted, it really was me, too) and so we ended up meeting up for a power breakfast the next morning, where we fell in love over the course of a two hour power conversation.  I won her heart by telling  her she had spinach in her teeth and she won mine by spitting poached egg all over me.

Who said that romance was dead?

Anyway, the point of all this is to say the following to any bloggers attending the conference next month: please go all zen and empty your mind of any expectations you have of me and, in turn, I promise not to vomit on your shoes and/or drag you up during the dinner-dance to do The Macarena, okay? That way, I think we’ll all be happy…