SCINTILLATING CONVERSATIONS, WITTY REPERTOIRE & PAINTED PENISES

The highlight of my day- no, week, no, my life:

Surrounded by a huge group of adoring fans, Travelcon keynote speaker Oneika Raymond stops talking when she sees me, smiles, and says, “Hi April, I didn’t know you were coming to Travelcon!”

O. M. G. Oneika Raymond (the Oprah of the travel blogging world) knows my name!

My scintillating reply, “Um, yeah,” and I walk away.

Argh!!!

And this is yet another reason I am a writer. I freeze in social situations, blowing the opportunity to establish relationships with unofficial mentors & experts in my field.

I follow my heroes online, cyberstalking people I’m a HUGE fan of; big influencers like Oneika RaymondGloria AtanmoCarol CainGlory Ali and Adventurous Kate McCulley.

I follow them religiously, reading their blogs, commenting and sharing their posts, spamming my friends repeatedly until they check out the blogs/ social media accounts of these writer titans, while hoping, wishing that one day I might have the courage to ask them if I could interview them.

These fierce, bold, courageous, outspoken, fearless women are not only smart, brilliant, funny; they’re nice. And I’m guessing each one of them would agree to an interview at some point, in spite of the fact that they’re globetrotting around the world and sharing their stories on award-winning sites.

Although I tend to place them on pedestals, these (and other) kick-ass influencers I’ve met are really human and down- to earth. They’re not divas and they never act like they’re celebrities even though they’ve got millions of followers between them. But I have not had the courage to actually have a conversation with them, never mind to interview them.

I freeze when I run into them. I can’t communicate. I sometimes manage to nod or grunt at them before running away instead of taking advantage of the fact that these experts are incredibly sweet and willing to share their knowledge with me and so many other bloggers and newbies.

Or, I do something insane, like the first time I met Glo (Gloria Atanmo from TheBlogAbroad) and the 1st words out of my mouth were, “Hi-I’m-Apri-your-stalker-fan-and-I’ve-got-a-gift-for-you,” and handed her a tiny penis keychain.

In my defense, it was a lovely wooden, hand-painted fertility symbol, quite popular in Bali, and lovingly painted with exquisite orchids.

But still, perhaps maybe not the best first impression to make when meeting one of my favorite blogger heroes.

In any case, I am loving Travelcon and the people I’m meeting and the sessions where I’m learning about SEO and creating content and social media strategy and how to be a powerful influencer with a kick-ass site.

For now, I can dream about the day that I might become so famous that some stalker fan gifts me with a painted penis. In the meantime, I’m going to go home to NYC and focus on creating some kick-ass content for my own site, including a new interview series where I feature bloggers (big and small) I admire.

Have you ever had the opportunity to meet your heroes and just froze? What happened? Did you get to fix it?

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