A selfie can change your life. Mine did.

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<– Not a life-changing selfie. Just a recent one in case we haven't met yet, so you know what I look like for next week.

It's a week until BlogHer14 kicks off, and this very blog turns nine years old this month! I didn't have dates on my original posts, but I do remember that it was mid-July sometime.

Nine years.

I had been blogging along, writing as I felt like it, actually thinking I was late to the trend, for just over 5 years, when I came across something called Reverb10. It was a posting challenge that I found on Twitter, post daily for the month of December, in 2010.

I was home recovering from my second kidney transplant, so I jumped in and completed the challenge.

I met lots of amazing people in that month, and found my love of writing again.

And then, in January, 2011, I got an email from Rita at BlogHer. She had seen my “Roadmap of My Life” post, which featured, you guessed it, a self-portrait I'd taken.

Hold up.

Someone will pay me for my words? WHAT?!?! Money? Just for saying stuff I think? On my blog? Are you kidding?

I didn't even know it was a thing. Also, someone I don't know is reading my blog? OMGWTFBBQ.

Fast-forward to BlogHer11. I'm getting a plane to San Diego, meeting these blogger friends for the first time. I'm still intimidated by many of them, unsure of what to expect, but excited at the potential and the prospects.

I had an amazing time, an the people I met there changed my life. I didn't even realize that people “did” social as a job. Didn't even know it was a possibility. For me. Coming home from BlogHer11, I had a new community, a new tribe, new friends. A group of us met for dinner one night, and we each laid out our plans, and brainstormed how we could help one another reach those goals, no matter how lofty. And about 8 months later, I was offered my dream job, doing social for a startup in San Francisco, and here I am today.

All thanks to a selfie.