I’m sitting in the middle of the exhibitor hall on the final day of WordCamp US 2025 in Portland, Oregon, unable to decide exactly what it is I am feeling. I realize that I am awash in a sea of contradictions, and the only thing I can think of doing is opening the old, dusty interface of my blog and pressing some words.

This event is so familiar and yet so foreign. Stepping on stage to deliver another talk was comfortable, shockingly comfortable, like wearing an old favorite pair of shoes long forgotten in the back of a closet, worn down exactly to the shape of your foot. They slide on easily, fit perfectly, and you remember vividly all of the outfits you used to wear with these shoes. All the people you used to be in those outfits, or the people you aspired to be. Outfits you realize you haven’t worn in years, as they slowly became worn, or dated, or stopped fitting as your body aged and changed. As your perspective also aged and changed. Those people wearing those outfits, those versions of you, have become worn and dated too, stopped fitting you. And the shoes don’t actually go with the outfits you’re wearing now. You were going to get rid of them, that’s why you dug them out in the first place. But they still fit so well…

I can feel the amount of time that has passed. I first stepped into these rooms in 2011, back when the spaces were smaller and the energy was scrappy and hungry. I was scrappy and hungry too, enthralled by the possibility that everything represented, young and green and unsure of what was next. There was a palpable energy that hooked me, and the room of strangers became a community that welcomed me and took me under its wing. There were so many people that became important to me, whom I would see more often than my own friends at home. We reunited in different states, with hugs and smiles and drinks and late nights; we connected and conversed on social media back when those conversations felt personal instead of algorithmic; we conversed on Skype and later Slack, before the amount of channels and rooms was overwhelming; we stayed at each other’s houses, shared meals, met families, shared so many memories.

I look around the hall now, knowing that so many of these faces are ghosts too, fading out over time as their lives took them different places. The children I met at these events have become adults with their own ambitions and careers. People have changed jobs, changed industries, moved up, moved on, even passed away. It’s once again becoming a room of strangers, only now I am seeing it from the other side, seeing “what has been” instead of “what could be.”

I think that is probably a natural consequence of the passage of time. I was in my 20s when I first arrived, and my next birthday will see me turn 40. These rooms have seen me through divorce, moving states, a global pandemic, love, breakups, death, remarriage, taking a job, late-diagnosed neurodivergence, and even a baby. My energy is not where it was – fragmented, worn down, redirected, narrowed. It’s inevitable that things change, that people who used to grind find their stride and settle down, that new people rise up to fill the void, that the world keeps turning and everything moves on. I’ve moved on too.

I show up this week and I’m overwhelmed. It feels like too much. I miss my family, I miss my routine, I miss my bed, I miss my home. It’s loud and different and a lot. But underneath that, I still see embers from the fire that used to be there. I get the feeling that maybe I could have energy again. Could be hungry. That maybe I’ve been too tired, too numbing, too much dissociating and scrolling when I could be finding ways to grow and be better. Or maybe I could be finding ways to be human and present. Are those at odds? Can I do them both? Can I do either one?

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Walt Whitman (and also the title of my LiveJournal from the early 2000s, of course)

I enjoy being on stage delivering a talk. I hate the process of getting there. I enjoy being in a room of my peers all working on the same things. I hate uprooting my life to be there. I want to be a person who is full of fire and drive and energy and potential. I want to be a person quietly burning a candle at home. I want to fly around the country sharing and collaborating. I want to walk down the street to the park with my baby. I want a broad and supportive community. I want to hibernate alone. I want to learn and grow. I want to sleep and rest. I want to be here. I want to be home.

I had to become willing to approach this event as though it were my last. To give myself permission to be done, even if I don’t end up being done. I’ve often struggled with endings, because they feel like an abandonment of the person I was when I began. And yet, of course I am not that person anymore. None of us are, because we shouldn’t be. We wouldn’t be able to move forwards without facing a multitude of endings. I can’t say whether this is the end of an era, but I need to say, for my sake, that it is ok for eras to end.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak again (being on stage feels so good, and the feedback that I’ve changed people’s perspectives or added to their knowledge feels even better) and I’m happy to have reconnected with the people I do know who are here. The time alone has been mentally refreshing, and the extra opportunities for movement have been physically rewarding (the donuts and skeeball have also helped). I think the person I was, who first stepped into the roomful of strangers, would never have predicted the person I am now.

If I take anything away from this, it’s to remember to consciously become the person I am going to be, whoever she is. I look forward to meeting her in the future. And who knows, maybe she will still be in these rooms.