“Community is … unlearning so much of what many of us have taught ourselves about making every moment of our lives as efficient and optimized as possible.”
- Anne Helen Petersen, “You Do Not Need To Sell This Life Today,” Culture Study newsletter.
A couple of people recently pointed out that I’m in a lot of online communities. It occurred to me that they’re right. Scrolling around, I see at least 10:
Multiple communities for ex-employees of my former employers.
A Reddit community for women whose kids were born in September 2018. (This has been a truly amazing experience, by the way. We bared our souls to each other during the depths of sleep deprivation in the newborn days. Now we are coming out of that haze as those babies are people who can walk and talk.)
Also, it has a Facebook group.
A Discord community that a friend and I (re-)started, based off an old IRC channel that we used to hang out back when we all lived in SF and things were simpler.
A Discord community for people who subscribe to the Culture Study newsletter.
A Discord community for people who subscribe to Comedy Bang Bang World.
Local parenting and Buy Nothing FB groups, aka the only things keeping me there.
A couple of Seattle subreddits (but definitely not that one).
And, I guess, Nextdoor? Though I think we all know that’s a highly problematic space. Around here it’s mostly coyote sightings and car break-in reports.
This past summer, I joined a couple of paid, women-only online spaces, too: one that I would recommend (OwnTrail’s Trail Guides program, which has since been revamped) and one that I would not.
I like to think I’m a fairly self-aware person. I know that is a lot. I’m trying to be more mindful about it. One personality trait of mine is that if I decide that I like a thing or person I get very excited and will kind of just hang around, forever. I suppose if you like me that’s fine, but it’s probably highly annoying if you don’t. But I digress. That’s another post entirely.
All of these online communities and I’m lonely as hell, every single day.
I’m ostensibly very connected, but I feel unsupported. Similar to how I have a house that we bought last year (for a lot more money than we had planned on spending), but I still feel unmoored.
When my mother was parenting a young me, she and her fellow stay-at-home moms had these forms of community:
Church. Not just the worship part, but the fellowship brunches and free childcare on weekends, an endless calendar of benefits.
Local service organizations. My mom was in a group called Tri Kappa, a not-actually-a-sorority kind of sorority. From what I gather, with that came philanthropic work, pie baking, and other wholesome Midwestern mom activities. Maybe for your parents it was the Lion’s Club or something like that.
Family members who lived within driving distance. When I was a baby, my paternal grandparents practically lived down the street. I’m the most envious of this one.
Beyond all of that, of course, those women had the economics of the 1980s on their side.
My mom once told me that their first house cost less than her car. LESS. THAN. HER. CAR. I’m still not over this. Let’s be clear, she did not have a Rolls Royce. It was a normal, decent car.
There once was a little girl who was born in 1983. She grew up in the Midwest and her parents were conservative and Christian. At age five, her family started moving all around the country and even to other side of the world and back.
When she was 10, some of her best friends were those she met through the Presbyterian church: youth group, church camp, vacation bible study. Always a skeptic by nature, she eventually stopped believing. It happened around the time she was developing her own political beliefs, as well. They turned out to be the polar opposite of her parents’.
Her sophomore year in high school, kids started shooting each other. A few years later, the Twin Towers fell. After that, nothing was ever the same again in this country (a cliche, but true).
She graduated college in time for the Great Recession. Completely on her own, she stumbled around throughout her 20s and early 30s, getting into student loan debt and credit card debt, moving locations constantly in pursuit of stability, safety, and maybe, one day, a family.
She got married and finally had a baby at 35. A year later, they decided to move again. One last move. A couple of months later, a global pandemic began.
If you are a certain type of Elder Millennial, this may have resonated with you.
Where does that leave her (me)? Where does that leave any of us?
How do we get out of this “Bowling Alone” feeling? Does it end?
In her newsletter, Anne Helen Petersen points out that community is basically a series of small acts of service. Her examples mostly take place in the real world: volunteering, asking someone if you can grab anything for them from the store. This is not coincidence. It’s very hard to “show up” for a person in a real way online, as much as all of us in the Community space try to make that not so.
Is it hypocritical to be pointing how important real-world interaction is, as the creator and manager of a mostly-virtual parents group? Hopefully not. I’m trying to be aware of this and add at least semi-IRL offerings, like a holiday card exchange (something you can hold in your hands).
When we first were renting a house in Seattle, a very nice older woman lived next door. She gave us a tiny tabletop Christmas tree, with lights and everything. She gave my daughter a beautiful Easter basket. “My family has had great privilege and happiness over the years,” she said, “I like to pass that on.” She checked in on us when she saw that a rooter service had come in the middle of the night (the basement had flooded and the furnace was out; we were not OK). I brought incorrectly delivered packages over to her house. We texted each other a bit and I learned about her family. I read an article she’d written for the historical society. Then she moved away to the countryside and so did we, but only down the hill. That relationship was so meaningful to me during a very bleak time.
When we moved into this house, I did my best to pay it forward. I gave our new neighbors small gifts and a card with my phone number on it. I know their names and have their numbers now, too. When they walk their dogs past our house, they say hello to my daughter and me if we’re playing in the garden or loading into the car. They are some of the only people I know in Seattle, still. I checked in on them when the power was out. We make passing comments about the weather to each other. If one of them has a problem, I will be here to help them. I hope they feel the same about us.
Sometimes those tiny interactions on our block feel as genuine and meaningful as “community” ever gets.
I do my best to have a neighborly approach with other people I know. My main work in this life is being a mom, but I also value being an attentive friend, daughter, granddaughter, half-sister, etc.. When an email is left unanswered in my inbox, I feel like I’m failing. If I haven’t gotten back to you in a few days, I’m probably feeling very guilty about it at this moment.
I will say: ironically, maybe, none of this comes easily to me. I have social anxiety and a general feeling that I did not receive the “How to Be a Person” handbook upon birth. It often hampers me in my community-building efforts. But I keep checking in, annoying those who aren’t a fan. Because, sorry! Hiii! How are you today? “I’m going to the store, can I pick anything up for you?”