December 7: Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?
A few months back - it must have been September as New Zealand Nykki and Kiwi Dave were present and accounted for - I organized a Church o' Brunch for a group of 14.
The guest list - as is nearly always the case when I organize a party like this - was a hodge podge of extraordinary people...who may or may not have known one another until that day.
The only thing every single one of them had in common was me...and my love for them. But I was not the center of attention. Nothing could be further from the truth, in fact, particularly on that day. I rarely am anyway...the center of attention, I mean...even when it's my own party. Instead, the guests sat down and within a couple of minutes, were conversing, laughing, poking at each other as though they'd known each other their whole lives.
It was in that moment - as I looked around the table filled with gladness - that I knew I am a collector of only the finest. My community. My lovely, sparkling friends.
I don't belong in any defined "community"...no little niche.
Certainly I dance along the periphery of several. It's hard not to be at least on the outskirts of a more structured sense of a community when that's often times what socializing entails - getting out among the masses and participating in something that has a common ground - however shaky that ground might be. Generally though, I don't consider myself to be a member of any of that kind of community.
I could be. It's not that I'm not capable. It's that I choose not to be that intertwined with a specific type of group.
Why?
A community is much like a small town. Everyone knows everyone else and knows everyone else's business - sometimes before the person whose business it is even knows it. There's drama galore and gossip and bullshit. And I think we've thoroughly established Jane's bullshit drama llama detector is set to highly sensitive.
I don't tolerate it. I rarely want to hear it.
Jane in her infinite wisdom is a Drama Free Zone.
So I don't dive right in and align myself with people I wouldn't know or particularly even like simply because they are part of a "community".
Rather, I circle the edges, dipping my toes in, smiling, laughing, kissing...and then I pluck the extraordinary ones from the pool and invite them to be occasional participants of my own community.
And that community is growing.
The gorgeous Ms. Noire and Himself.
The Gothfather and his lovely bride.
And several others.
Slowly but surely I'm adding to my collection.
The finest. Truly.
1 comment:
Yup - we do the same (collecting people). My mental framework makes it sound like we put them in jars on a shelf to trophy to other collectors, but it's not near so bad as that. We aren't joiners either - to where attending parties is either taking over the party or skirting the edges and leaving early, generally.
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