what rating should I reach before I try to play in some competition?

there is a couple of places here in montreal that do chess tournaments, there is a chess café that does a blitz every month and is pretty well known for its chess players. I know trying it out can do no harm in the sense that the worse thing that can happen is i simply lose but what rating do you guys personally think would make my attempt not a waste of time, and a learning experience ? if I was 800 for example, id just get crushed and learn nothing, if I am somewhere between 1000-1300, is it still a ridiculous rating to go try it out ?

so, at what rating do you personally think id go to a table of chess players at a cafe where they all train and play at a respectable level? iv been playing here for 2 months and I went from 800 to 1100 in blitz. tried some classical and for now im 1300 after 16 games. should I say work on it 6 months more ? i guess in 6 months of 2-3 games a day id go up a bit more at least.

no?

go now i went when i was 400.

When you start playing rated events is up to you.  I started shortly after learning how the pieces move, while others prefer to wait until they have some advanced knowledge.  

The importan thing is to have fun.

You don't make any real progress by playing chess.com blitz. Maybe you get better at avoiding hanging pieces and quick tactics, but that's it. It will help you immensely to play in some long time control rated tournaments, where you can practice making long-term plans and calculating tactics instead of playing what "looks like it'll work."

Of course, just playing in tournaments can only get you so far, and it certainly should be supplemented with tactics trainers like chesstempo.com, opening study, and most importantly, chess books/videos, but it will do you much better than just playing blitz here.

I played my first OTB at tata steel this year, a year after learning how to play at all. It was real fun, so just have a go! Got into winning positions in all three games but salvaged only a half point....

In a blitz tourney against regular club players, you'll probably get crushed, so it may not be a lot of fun. However, you'll also need to get some practice OTB at some stage, otherwise your online chess skills will never translate there.

An option might be to look for slower OTB time-controls, where you would have time to use a better thought process and reduce the # of blunders, thus making the game more interesting.

It's difficult to become a good blitz player without playing some longer games from time to time.