Spirit Northwest Diary: What if Community is the Real Magic?

Angel Number 955 hits like a spotlight: reconfigure your loving connections. We start with a card pull that’s oddly specific, then follow it into the real work of relationship magic, not just romance, but self-trust, friendship maintenance, family check-ins, and the way Beltane season asks us to nurture what we want to grow. I also share a simple, surprisingly powerful practice you can do anywhere: a self-hug as grounding, especially if you get overwhelmed, feel untethered, or live with neurodivergence. 

I share about a first-time milestone I didn’t expect to be so emotional: traveling alone and staying in a hotel solo for the first time at almost 44, all to attend Spirit Northwest in Portland. I talk honestly about insomnia, ADHD-style sleep patterns, city disorientation, and the nerves of walking into a big pagan and witchy conference where you mostly know people from online spaces. Framed like a hero’s journey, the trip becomes a quest for belonging and validation I didn’t realize I needed. 

I take you through the best moments: opening rituals, a Hathor-themed rebirth experience, teaching my class on crafting your own spells and rituals (and the relief of seeing people actually show up), plus standout sessions on elemental magic, psychic sleuthing, qi gong for grounding, hummingbird magic blended with culture and science, and Slavic fortune-telling that connects surprising threads across traditions. If you’re into witchcraft, pagan community, spell crafting, correspondences, ritual design, and real-world magical friendships, this one’s for you. 

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Transcript

Angel Number 955 And Relationships

Beltane Check-Ins And Daily Connection

Spring Herbs And Homemade Healing Salves

Coven Readings And Correspondences Theme

Guest Astrologer Class Preview

First Solo Trip To Spirit Northwest

Insomnia ADHD And Travel Overwhelm

Belonging Validation And The Hero Quest

Other Podcasts And Where To Find Me

Opening Rituals And Conference First Night

Teaching Spellcraft And Meeting Coven Friends

Keynotes Signings And Presenter Encounters

Elemental Magic And Psychic Sleuthing

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Hello, witches. Welcome to another Cozy Coven chat. I am your host, Jenny Sue Bell, and this is for the week of May 3rd. And I know I always say this, but like what? Um so I have been, we have been going through my book, Divergent Witchcraft. We're gonna pause on that today so we can talk, I can talk to you about um my first witches conference or convention or meetup, however you want to describe it, a Spirit Northwest. And then next week we'll go back into looking at the book and talking about it. Um but first I uh just want to thank everybody that listens. Um this podcast is really a labor of love, and I love being able to start the week with you. I actually sometimes will go back and listen to it too, because sometimes I don't fully remember, even though I have notes and stuff, like what I'm saying or what card I pulled. And I I really love it. I love the ritual of it, of having the podcast, and I love the connection we're building. I think we're building a lovely community. Um, you know, all of us that listen, we're in it together, the messages are for us. So, speaking of that, this month I decided to use the Angel Numbers deck um by Mystic Michaela, and it's from Adam's Media. She has a couple books too. Um this is a really spot-on deck. A lot of us using it in our coven. It's huge, it has like a ton of cards, and the it's just like you pull it, the numbers on there and the information, so like you don't even need a book. Um it's always weirdly spot on for anybody I use it for, including myself, and it's really, really good. I love it. So for this uh week we got the number 955. And so if you there's like websites that look up angel numbers. I have Kyle Gray's angel number book um on my Kindle, and so I will often look up numbers there. But if you have like a place that you look up numbers, you know, you can see what you get. But the number is 955. Sounds like I'm saying a phone number. Um, and it's romantic relationships. Reconfigure your loving connections. You are being asked to change up your way of doing things in romance, whether you are single or in a relationship, your angels would like you to take today to reflect and reconfigure how you go about connecting with others. Give yourself a hug right now. Oh, I love that. And feel the love you have with within abundance, abundantly flow throughout your body and soul. So give us yourself a hug right now. I do that in you know, in yoga, you'll cross like your right arm over your left and like hug yourself, and then you can turn that into like eagle arm pose. And it always just feels so good. So if you're listening and you're in a place you can do that, give yourself a squeeze. Um, that also is really helpful for people that get overwhelmed or people who feel like sometimes like they're out of their body. A lot of neurodivergent people feel that way, like need some kind of grounding, and just like hugging onto yourself is really good. Hug a teddy bear. Um, I have a stuffed black Philip um goat, like in the movie The Witch from the movie Coven. Uh, so yeah, give someone a hug, give yourself a hug, hug your pet, do something like that. I like that we're getting this uh relationship card when we're still in the energy of Beltane. So Beltane, like I say, you know, we're in the energy until the next holiday. So we have this, we're still in the full moon energy, the full moon and Scorpio, we have this Beltane energy. And Beltane is all about relationships, fertility, love, inner relationships. Because I think about, you know, with flowers, you need bees and you need worms and you need ladybugs and all of those things. So let's apply this to all the relationships, like our relationship with ourselves, our relationship with the earth, our relationship with our friends, our co-workers, our loved ones. Um, if you're in a romantic relationship, that relationship. So I think it's a good week to just think about that. It's a good it's good to touch like a touchstone to check in. So I have two kids and they are very different and different genders, five years apart, so in different stages of life. And I really do try every week to make sure that I do something, some kind of check-in with them each. I mean, I talk to them every day, but like I'll offer to take my daughter. Hey, you want to go to the art gallery? Do you want to um go thrifting? You know, whatever, with my son, do you want to go to the park? I at least offer to do something with them each individually. They don't always take me up on it, and that's okay too, but they know that I'm willing to spend time with them. And I think that is huge. That I'm willing and I want to spend time with them, that I'm offering my energy and time. Um I think sometimes that's all it is. Like sometimes it's just like about the offer of spending time, you know. Like as an adult, I'm sure you have the same problems of trying to get together with your friend or two friends, and you have to reschedule and cancel and reschedule and cancel, but you're trying, but you're trying. And those friends know that you're trying and you're thinking of them, and that's part of it, right? That's that's part of it, is that you're trying and you're thinking. So reconfigure your loving connections. I love that. Um, like I said, we're still in the bellatine energy, we're still in the full moon energy. It's really spring now. I'm actually wearing shorts today. Um, fun fact, I hate pants. Like, I know we fought hard to wear pants as women, and I respect that, but I'm short and so pants hardly ever fit me. So I really get excited when we can get back into like shorts and skirts and like not wear pants at all. Dresses. Um, so yeah, so I think this is fun. This time of year, um, my yard starts to really take off, and so I like to start collecting herbs already, especially if you grow anything in the mint family. Rosemary uh is in the mint family. Um, any of the mints, basil, um why am I lemon, lemon balm. They you can just keep harvesting them like down to nothing, and they'll just keep coming back all year, like all season. So my lemon balm is already taken off. I'm gonna be harvesting. Um, I already harvested yarrow because yarrow comes in before it flowers, it comes in really soft and low to the ground. That's my favorite time to get it to make dry for teas and for tinctures and things. I'm actually drying this um to make into a balm. So I just dried it. I'm gonna add olive oil and let it, and I think I'm gonna add calundula, and then let that sit and I'm gonna shake it every day for like six weeks, and then I will strain it and add beeswax and turn it into a solve. Um, I made this really great solve that everybody swears by, but I made it with dead metal. Turns out I'm allergic to that, so I cannot use it. I nope, that's a no for me. So um, but everybody else loves it, so I've given them all away and everybody else can use it. It's very soothing, helps like sunburns and bruises and all this stuff, but my body says that's a no, so that's okay. Um, oh, in our coven, we are our theme. Um, well, like first of all, let me back up. So in our coven, I always do a reading every month, and this time I did a grab bag. I really loved uh I love Charm Intuition Tarot on YouTube, Liz. And she's like my favorite YouTube reader, and I find her very comforting and relaxing to watch, so it's like a comfort show for me. And she does all kinds of fun things, and she did a grab bag. I think the grab bag was for Valentine's. Trying to think, but anyway, I decided to do something similar, so I got three bags, three different colors, and I filled them with like intuitively chosen like um milagros or charms, um pogs, tiny tarot, and then other things, and then I cast them and we talk about it. And so far it's been really fun because I've been encouraging everyone in our coven to tell me what they see, what their interpretation is, and they're really good. They're really good. So just like a different way to do a reading sometimes, and you might connect with that better. So we're doing that. Our theme um for right now. Why am I drawing a blank? So I'm actually just gonna be really honest. I'm actually pretty tired. Um, and I have not, and we'll get into that more about traveling, um, but I've actually I'm still not totally caught up on sleep, and I've been home for a while now. Um and that's just that's just a thing. That's and I'll I'll get into it. It's part of my neuro special neurodivergence. Okay, so our theme is correspondences. I don't know why I couldn't think of that. And that is double, so we can talk about like maybe sending postcards to one another within our covenant or emails, and then we can talk about correspondences in witchcraft, which is you know, moon time and astrological time, color, um, season. So many things. There's like huge books of correspondences, so that's what we're getting into in there. And then we have a special guest as our live, uh, Nariana Montofar, who is a beautiful astrologer, an artist. Um, she writes books, she's uh does classes, she's a very fascinating person in general. But she's uh doing a class with us, and I asked her if she'd like to be in there and do a live with us, and I just thought it'd be something like more relaxed, but she was like, No, I actually have a class plan that I've been wanting to try out, so we get to try it out in our coven, which was super fun. So it's called The Tale of Horses and Centaurs: Finding Healing and Freedom in the Year of the Fire Horse and Beyond. And so she combines all kinds of astrology and intuition and witchcraft. It's gonna be amazing. So she's doing the presentation with us uh live, but all things are recorded. So if you join us for this month, you'll get to join her for that. And then if you can't make the actual live, then it'll be in our library for everybody to enjoy. Um, seems very timely, seems exciting. So we have that going on. Okay, so let's dive into Spirit Northwest. So full before I even dive into that, I turned 44 on April 26th, and I had never traveled alone, and I had never stayed in a hotel alone until this conference. And I think that's pretty crazy. I've done road trips with family and friends. I and and I have traveled to hotels with family and friends, but I'd never stayed alone. Even when I was a teacher and I did conferences, I always had a roommate or I had brought my family. So I had never I hadn't driven that far in a long time. I'm usually a passenger princess. And so it was when I say like I'm tired, it's because I really didn't sleep. I the night before I left, which was Wednesday night, I left on a Thursday, I was having a hard time sleeping. I had insomnia for many years. Um, it's actually why I liked the movie Fight Club so much that I digress. Uh, and I realize now it's part of my neurodivergence, and um if you have ADHD, you might have trouble sleeping also. I think it's pretty common. But so I have to have a pretty like long wind-down period. I have to have things just so. If I stay up past 10, my body resets itself and is like, oh, we're up for another four hours now. Like I can't, there's no no in between. And so at this point, I'll just say I didn't really sleep until Saturday night. And I think only got like four hours, and then I'm still catching up as we go. Um, because I came home Sunday and I slept that night, but then it's just been catching up with that. So there was that going on. Um, there was the whole like I've never met any of these people in person. Um, I had plans to meet some people, but you never know, like, if they actually want to hang out with you when you get there. So it was a lot of excitement. I was really excited about this. I was nervous about aspects of the driving. I'd never done ballet parking before. I mean, it was just like I've never stayed in Portland. Like when we visited, we stay in like neighborhoods, Airbnb. I'm like in downtown Point Portland, hadn't stayed in a city in a long time. It was just a lot of stuff, and I don't usually leave the family. You know, my son, he's 10, but he was like, I can't believe you're gonna leave. Like he goes on visits his grandparents, he goes camping, but I don't leave. And so it was it was good. I rem I sat with my guides in meditation and they're like, every hero needs a quest. And I thought, yeah, this is it. I need to go away, just like every if you read Joseph Campbell, like in every hero's journey, you need to go away to come back knowing that the magic was within you all along. And I needed it, I really did, and I've come back feeling very validated in a lot of things. Uh my cup is very full, my like social cup, my connection cup, my um, my witchy cup, my magic cup. I yeah, it was I didn't know I needed the validation to know that I belong, but I did. I did need it, and I do feel like I belong. And so that was actually really beautiful, and I'm really glad I went. Um I've only ever been to this conference. I talked to other witches and pagans there. So this is not just a it's a pagan spiritual witchy conference, like it's very inclusive. Um, there's lots of out there's lots of them out there. As far as I know, this is the only one really on the West Coast. And for me, like I could drive. So that's why I chose this one. Um, like I can drive, it's like close. Um, and I was hoping to make connections in my state too, because I really haven't put too much um too many routes down, actually. And so that was that was important, I think, for me, um, to be able to do that. And would I do it again? Heck yeah, I would. I don't want to go alone though. That's my thing. I don't want to go alone, and I also would be open to traveling too, to go like to a different place if the whole family wants to go and they're like into this idea of you know me doing the witchy conference and they could visit. I'm I had met someone there who did that with Sacred Space. Her husband went and did all the tour guides, touristy stuff while she was in classes, and then the last day she kind of got to do some of that stuff. But I wanted to share, speaking of local, so um Waking Up the Witch is a podcast uh with Taylor and Amber, and they live in the same area as me. They live in the Rogue Valley of Oregon, and I am gonna be on their show. Well, by the time this airs, I will have been on their show the previous Friday. So please check that out. I think it was an exceptionally good conversation. We all really hit it off. Um, we had a lot of similarities, and their show's fun because they ask you about like your origin story, and that was really fun to share. So please check that out. I'll try to link it um when if I can. And then I am now co-hosting on Granddaughter Crow's show, Belief Being and Beyond. And uh that's a good time. That's a really good time. We're having we have lots of fun guests, and we have some other ideas up our sleeves, and it comes out every Saturday, and we have a premiere on YouTube at 5 p.m. Pacific time, and that's fun because you can chat with people that show up, so it's like watching it live. Okay, so back to Spirit Northwest. I got there, did all the stuff, and I need to go in through all the details. First night we did an opening ritual, and the three people that put this on are Courtney Rubber, uh Silent and Kanani, and very good energy. It was a really nice opening ceremony. They passed around a jar of soil, and we all spoke what we were bringing to the conference. I said it was bringing laughter. I was gonna say community, but it was taken. So I was like, I'm gonna say laughter because I think I'm funny. Um, and so we did that, and then afterwards I went to um a ritual, which was really fun. It was called honoring the lady of the sky and is the Hathor and the Holy Cows, three women who were uh elders and funny and like spiritual, and we did this whole like rebirth uh ritual. They cleansed us, they we were rebirthed, and then they gave us sacred like honey to put on our altars. We sang, it was really fun, so loved that. And a lot of these conferences have rituals, and if you're not into it, there was um a horror hotel movie screening, and I wanted to do that, but so the name is Horror Hotel. Okay, and I was staying in a hotel for the first time in my life uh alone, and so I was not going to watch that. I wanted to because I do like the movie coven and I knew it'd be a good time. Those two actually have a podcast called Broomsticks, Broomsticks and Bloodshed, and it's really fun. Talk about movies and from like the witch's perspective, but also um from I don't know, it's just a really good time. Um it's for anybody that loves witchy horror movies. So if you like movie coven, I think you'd also like that. And so I did want to go to that, but I was like, if I wasn't staying alone, maybe. But I'm really glad I went to the rituals, good way to start the day. The next morning, Friday, uh the 24th, I was get slotted to speak at 9 a.m. I got up at 5 a.m. That wasn't my intention, but my body's like, just get ready. So I was very awake by the time that rolled around. Something with these conferences to keep in mind is there will always be choices. So if you decide to go, it's kind of nice if you have a friend there because you can compare notes and go to different classes, um, which I did a few times with Julie from our Coven and Ashley Baudell, who um so let me talk about that. So I met Julie immediately when I got there. We just happened to meet, and same with Ashley. And Julie was everything I thought she would be. You know, our Coven is online, so it was my first time meeting someone from our Coven in person, and she has such great energy, and it was like it was beautiful. And we took several classes together. She came to my class and she introduced me to some people. I introduced her to some people. I don't know, we had a great time. And then Ashley Bodell and I, we had dinner that first night on Thursday. She took my class, we took other classes together, we went to the mixer together, we just became kind of like uh like ride or die convention, witchy con conference, ride or die friends. Like we just had a great time. So, so my class was called Crafting Your Own Spells and Rituals, and to be honest, I really did I my biggest fear was that no one would show up except for Julie and Ashley. And I only made 15 copies of something, and I had way more people than that, which was really nice. Um, thank you for everybody that came out. Um, you know, when you're first starting out doing these things, you just don't anticipate who's gonna show up, and people really showed up for me, and I will forever be grateful. It really was validating, and it was really nice because I needed that, didn't know I needed that, but I did. And it was so good to be back in the saddle again. Like I'm a teacher, like that's my background, and so I loved we played like a get to know you game. We did journaling, we did pair share, we did group shares, we it was very interactive. I met everybody, walked around, shook everybody's hand. Like it was so fun, and I think people walked away with some good information and also connection. My goal was that people would walk away, like at least knowing some people, so they're not at this conference alone. And we went over basically the chapter in my book on Divergent Witchcraft, which is all about creating your own spells, because I see that that's not often taught. You know, in books we give lists of spells, and a lot of people don't have the confidence to create their own. So one of the things we actually talked about was correspondences, which we're talking about in our coven, and like steps to make a successful spell and ritual. And it was so fun to have people share their ideas and their input. Um, it was beautiful. So I did that, which meant I couldn't go to other people's classes. I was really hoping to take a class with Robin Murphy. Um, we've become friends on social media. I met her, she's lovely, and hers was called Becoming a Good Ancestor because she's really like owning the crone era of her life, and so I'm sure that was amazing. After that, I went to the keynote speaker, um, it was Evo Dominguez Jr. And I didn't get to stay for all of it because I was doing a book signing and I needed to go eat lunch. Um, but he's so grounded and really kind, and just made me like his books even more. Um my author signing, I was with uh Jess and Angelica, who is the author of Llewellyn's Complete Book of the Moon. Um, she's a lovely person, great light, great energy. Um I got her book, we swapped books, and I brought it home, and I really love it. The whole time that I was there, Heather Green, she's the editor from Llewellyn, but she's also on the movie. Kevin was there, so I got to finally meet her in person. And we chatted and we talked one night. We talked movies. It was it was great. Then I took a class with Taverly, and Taverly has a huge Instagram following. You can find her there. And she has like five books coming out in the Oracle deck. And I took a class called The Wheel of Elemental Magic with her. And we really dived into the elements and how they affect your energy, and how you can call them in to help your energy, and what it feels like to have the elements in your body. And it was really about embodying elements, which is a different approach, and I really liked it. I found her to be really funny. She's like a really funny speaker. Um, and her first book is called North. So she's doing one for each element, and I'm so excited. We're gonna get her on Granddaughter Crow show, um, Belief Being and Beyond, because I think you guys are on all of her if you don't already know her. And then I was gonna take one, so this is the other thing that happens. You're at the conference and you're like, I'm definitely gonna take this one class, but then you talk to someone or you meet someone and you're like, No, I need to take this class. So I ended up taking psychic sleuthing skills for psychic investig investigation with Jay Allen Cross, who I am a fan of, his work, his books, and he that was such a fun class. I mean, we basically looked at cases and we used our psychic abilities to solve them and find missing items, and he does this like he helps police departments, he helps people find missing people. Um, he's also part of a paranormal investigation team, and he was just so fun to talk to, and so such a fun class. I took it with both Julie and Ashley, and we all were like amazed at each other's skills, and one of them, he was even amazed at what I said, like his eyes got big because I basically I didn't know anything, but I totally connected everything to this like house that I saw. I connected like everything that happened in the house, and I don't know, so fun. So that was probably my favorite class, actually, because it was interactive also, it was it was just a fun time. Then that night was a mixer, I decided to do that, um, which was fun. Got a glass of wine, which I'm realizing I don't think I can drink as wine anymore. I think it's the histamine in it, but that's another topic. The next morning I got up and I took uh magical Qi Gong with Renee Collins, and that was really fun, or qi gong, sorry, um, where he combines qi gong, and he's been doing it forever, with uh magic, and he's a ceremonial magician, he also was a circus performer at some point in his life. He was that was so fun to move my body because you know what? I'm not a city girl, like being in the city there in Portland and being like up high, like it not in the ground of the building, was so disoriented for my little tourist self who's used to like going outside every day and putting my feet on the ground. It was, I really did not like that. And so that class was so good. He showed me some things for grounding. Um, and my I felt like my energy shifted, even though I hadn't been sleeping well, I felt healthy. So that was beautiful. And then I went to the keynote uh with Laura de Vila, who I've been such a huge fan of. Uh, she's an author, she has Mexican sorcery, she has Mexican magic, she has a third book on Mexican remedies coming out. Um, but we've just been kind of like internet friends, and she uh her whole presentation was about hummingbirds. She dedicated it to her mother who just passed away, and it was about the history of hummingbird bird magic, but also the science of hummingbirds, and you learn we learned so much about Mexican culture and history through that, and oh, she's such a good speaker. We did this beautiful ceremony where we all um wrote down something negative someone once said about us, like you're to this or to that. I wrote down I'm too sensitive because I've been told that my whole life. And then you claimed it. So you wrote the next phrase. It was like, I am sensitive and I'm magical. And then we'd fulfilled filled it up three times and we put it in our heart, and then we passed it around and didn't open it. We just held people's words in our heart. And it was very much like in a Catholic church, like when you do peace be with you. And then we brought them all to the altar up front, and people were crying. I mean, I was crying, it was so beautiful, she's a great speaker, and that was awesome. And then um after that, I after lunch and all this, I took uh Mysteries of the Vroshka, Slavic fortune-telling secrets with a one and only Madame Femita, who is so nice. Um, that was an amazing class. They gave her this small room, I don't know what they were thinking, and people had to bring chairs in because it's Madame Famita. I mean, come on. Like, if you haven't read her Baba Yaga book, you need to. I have her um, she's gonna be putting out an Oracle deck this year. She's an amazing speaker, it was interactive, we were fortune-telling, I took a lot of notes. Um, for me, my grandmother, Jane, she was Polish-Russian, and my stepgrandmother was from the Czech Republic. And so I, having these two Slavic grandmothers in my life, I really connected with a lot of the information in the class. And one of the most interesting things I learned, and I just need to share, is that the limpia, the egg limpia, that a lot of people are familiar with from like Mexican magic, is almost identical to the Slavic egg cleansing. And then there's also an egg cleansing that's in Italy. So we have three cultures who are separated geographically, all doing egg cleansings, which is so fascinating to me. Um, and then I went and took a nap so that I could go out um with my friends. I mission originally wanted to do another ceremony with uh Jessamine, and it was gonna be on um supposed to be really good, but I ended up going to Raven's Manor. So if you're ever in Portland, the two places I I mean, besides Powell's bookstore, the two very witchy places I found um were Black Cat Frozen Custard, which is got a speakeasy, and it's like all apothecary themed inside, and it's got goth music, so witchy. I got a vegan custard, it's delicious. And then the other place called Raven's Manor, and Raven's Manor is like if you took the haunted mansion from Disneyland and you turned it into a restaurant and bar, and all the names of the drinks were like hilarious. I bought my dinner was um a vegan chicken sandwich, but my fries were Van Helsing fries because they were garlic, and so everything comes in a skull gloss, the bathroom has like blood on the mirror, um, we were right by this big coffin, it's so dark in there, and I ended up having uh dinner with Laura DeVila and her husband and Ashley Bodell, and we just had a great time. And it totally, I was like planning on going to the ceremony, the infinite hat hor hath horse thing, but didn't work out, and it was fine because this was like early birthday celebration, and we were done speaking, like Laura and I, so we could like let off some steam, and I had such a great conversation. It was why I went. Like I went, this is this was the reason I went there. It was like to yes to speak, to to connect, but then this was like the real thing is to build community and meet these people in person and realize they're just as fun as you thought they would be, and just be like, that was such confirmation. Like the people that I see online that I think, gosh, I think we could be friends in real life. We can, we can, and that was really cool. Um, and then I ended up uh going going that night. I decided I would come home early, so I had got up, I had actually had breakfast with Madame Pamita and two other people that were at the conference that were super nice, and then I started hiding home because it was my birthday, and when my son was like, I would love to we want to have you home for dinner. They made me enchiladas, and we had like a nice chocolate uh cake for dessert, and I wanted to be home with the fam. So I didn't take any of the classes that day. Um, I really wanted to. Um, there was like a cool panel that was happening, and then I wanted to see Samantha Rose Hicks, um, who I think is really cool, and she has a really cool tarot book. But you know, you can't the thing I'm learning is you can't do it all. Um, so a couple of takeaways. You can't do everything. So just go in knowing that. Build in rest, build in hydration, build in food breaks, because you might just not be able to do anything. Oh, there's a whole like vending area too that I didn't even mention. Um, there's so many things. There was tattoos, like there's so much to do. And if you're traveling somewhere you've never been, you're gonna also want to do some of the tourist stuff, so you're just gonna have to accept that you can't do it all. Second takeaway is that these people, the presenters, the authors are approachable. Like it's not like an us and them type of thing, you know, where like the authors walk around and are like, you can't talk to me. It's not at all like that. They are at the mixers, they're mingling, like everyone's just chatting, like it's not it's not at all like that. Like, I liked talking to non-presenters, I like talking to people that are just there attending because they have wisdom to share too. Like, they're no, like I'm in I'm in attendance. Um it's there's no wrong way to do it. And yeah, I think it was a really great experience. Um, definitely open to doing more things like this in the future. Definitely feel like some confidence got built that oh yeah, I can do this, I can travel, I can do things, you know. I hadn't really traveled since COVID. And so that was good. It was really good for me. So yeah, that was my whole experience. Um and next week we'll get back into talking to the book. Bless it be.