Last night I was fortunate enough to attend the Dayton, Ohio book tour stop for Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir by The Bloggess, Jenny Lawson. Let me start by saying that Jenny Lawson was wonderfully entertaining, super friendly, and all around AWESOME! Dayton, being the lamest place on earth, was the one and only stop on this book tour or the last to tell Jenny she wasn’t allowed to curse.
She did a Q&A session afterwards and I asked what advice she would give to my daughter who is away at college and struggling with anxiety. Her response: ‘tell her she rocks for even having the courage to go away to school, I didn’t, and pretend you’re good at it.’ She then went on at length about building a support group and being open about having a mental illness and although my daughter wasn’t able to go to the signing with me, when I passed the advice along she smiled, nodded, agreed, and then was super bummed that she missed the signing.
As to “pretend you’re good at it” Jenny explained that this was advice given to her by Neil Gaiman (OMG!!!) and that she writes it on her arm before every speaking event. This will totally be my next tattoo.
After the Q&A we got our books signed. Since I preordered to get the signed book plate for my hardcover and I won her blog contest for an autographed audiobook, I decided to pick up the paperback for my daughter and Andy. When I told Jenny the book was for my daughter whom I’d spoken about, she added “you rock!” to the signature. Very cool of her.
Then it was photo time
And I even got a hug from Copernicus. 🙂
So yeah, it was AWESOME!
mylifesweird 