Debbie says:
It’s the next weekend and I’m at the next gathering in the next city (no, I don’t always live like this, but this month I do). And I’m still thinking about WoolfCamp. From a blogging point of view, I think the most important thing I came away with was the conversation (which I didn’t even attend) on identifying your audience. I heard lots of bits and pieces about that conversation afterwards, and everything everyone said underscored for me how important blogs are, as places for such a wide variety of personal expression. People who write for themselves, for friends and family, for a close circle of blogging friends, for a wider audience, for money, for social change, for explicating something in their own lives, for distributing links, for describing dreams, for selling something close to their heart … for whatever reason.
Another theme for me (surprise!) was the body-image theme. In the initial introductions, one woman said she “wanted to be a healthy weight.” Another woman told me she didn’t know there was such a thing as body image activism (slender herself, she’s been a one-woman body-image activism center for years with her heavier friends, but she didn’t know there were resources to help her out). Once again, I was struck about how body image is everybody’s issue, and how desperate people are to talk out the issue. I’m not just talking about fat, here, but the whole range of body image issues for all genders: size, age, musculature, dis/ability, and so much more. We never really delved into this issue at WoolfCamp, but we did touch on it over and over again.
And then there were just the delights of being in the Santa Cruz hillsides, in rain and sunshine, with fascinating people–and lots of delightful children.
Maybe we need a BodyImageCamp someday?