I’m sitting at Sugarhouse Coffee. I’m here because I’m grieving the loss of all the cool people I met at SXSW. When I woke up in my hotel on Wednesday morning, I had this feeling of sadness. I was sad that the conference was over and that I had to go home. I have felt this feeling before at the end of a good vacation, but this was different. I didn’t want to stay a couple extra days in Austin. What I was grieving was leaving the city. I was grieving every cool person I had met over the previous few days. They were all going home or had already gone home. Austin felt like an empty shell.

I sat on the hotel bed next to Mike while he snored away. I pulled out my journal and wrote about the empty feeling in the pit of my stomach. I tried to brainstorm ideas.

• Maybe I could organize a SXSW meetup in Salt Lake City. Sadly only 20 people in the entire state of Utah attended. There weren’t enough in SLC to organize a proper meetup.

• Maybe I could go to another conference soon. Are there any other conferences as creatively stimulating as SXSW? I had no idea.

• Maybe I could find a tribe of creative people who are just as interesting as the people at SXSW. I have been trying to do this for years and I don’t really have hope for this.

So, with no ideas, I just wandered around the hotel room. I packed up our dirty clothes. I checked my email. I read some online comics. I waited for Mike to wake up until I couldn’t wait anymore. I held back the tears as I tried to describe to him the sense of loss I was feeling. His advice helped a little bit.

It gets better next year.

So, I’m here at Sugarhouse Coffee. I’m writing my entries. I have been able to do a full day’s worth of work in a few hours by typing my entries to the beat of the indie music. There are noisy people around me and they wear hipster t-shirts, but there is also an autistic guy in the corner rocking back and forth. It’s raining outside, so the kids are all crammed into the shop. I’ve paid for a month of Internet access here, so I can work in the noise and pretend that these people are my tribe. Maybe I’ll collect a group of Salt Lake people just as interesting and energetic as the people I met at SXSW, but until then, I’ll distract myself.