(Photo by Julie Lavoie)

Adjusting to Real Life after a weekend in South Beach, filled with mojito-flavored space popsicles, champagne, Cuban food, unicorn puzzles, and badass, ambitious, feminist women is like coming down from some fantastic drug-induced hallucination. This morning I was unpleasantly surprised that there wasn't a sunkissed cabana man waiting to serve me delicious iced coffee, and the absence of poolside complimentary wine hour at 5pm will only deepen my wounds. (And yes! Cabana men are real! Unfortunately for me they are all either teenagers or gay or both, and even more unfortunately none agreed to move to Austin to volunteer as my butler.)

Fortunately, we Bullicorns are well-equipped for aggressively confronting this cabana man-less Real World, because alongside recreating like a total fucking badass, BullCon was packed with motivating workshops. Topics included negotiation with Ji Eun (Jamie) Lee, who frequently speaks at women's conferences on the topic; planning your 2014 and the top 10 principles of bullishness with Jen Dzuira, organizer of the conference and writer of the Bullish column; time management with Laura Vanderkam, author of What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast;  all the tools to do all the things (and the power of being your own assistant, at least if you don't have one) with Haley Mlotek, publisher of Worn magazine and Jen's virtual assistant; and pitching yourself and your ideas (without selling out) with Jennifer Wright, Editor-in-chief at the New York Observer. Write-ups on each of the workshops can be found on the Bullish blog.

BullCon was the perfect balance of gentlewomanly recreation and productivity, and I'm excited to see the progress each of us makes in the next year. See you ladies in 2014 (and on the internet)!

tags: bullish career management negotiation pitching time management