Today, for the first time in my life, I attended Pride Fest in Milwaukee. The original motivator for me to go was that a coordinator from the United Church of Christ was looking for volunteers to man their booth in the Market Place. The goal was to share my experience with the UCC's Open and Affirming program at my church with the folks who came by. In order to get people to stop at the booth, I had to be energetic and very outgoing. Something that can be a challenge, even in such a safe place.
It turned out to be a confidence building experience without a doubt. I mean yes this was Pride Fest so you expect people to be more friendly and accepting, but what was great was that for 3 hours I got to break out my shell and really expose the real me to the folks I was meeting. It felt great, I had lots of people stop by and was enable to easily engage in conversation. This is something I've always struggled with, I've always been fairly shy and awkward, so for me to be out there initiating conversations with strangers was huge. I had so much fun talking with different people about any variety of topics and it all seemed to come totally naturally. I'm still not quite sure how I did it.
The only "oops" moment I had was I kind of steered myself into a corner during one conversation and ended up outing myself to one of my son's high school classmates. I stressed to her that I wasn't out in public yet so hopefully she'll keep it on the down low, but if not, both my son (who I talked to about it after I got home) and I are ready to take it on.
Here's a quick selfie I took the parking lot just before the festival:
