greenstorm (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
greenstorm) wrote2021-08-04 10:14 am
greenstorm) wrote2021-08-04 10:14 am
Spoils the bunch
This post is heavy. It's even heavy on my hands as I type.
When I moved to Vancouver I slowly networked into a wonderful, vibrant, unconventional, supportive community of folks. For a little while each I was particularly close to two community hub-type people and by bringing them together the community grew. We took care of each other in various ways and though the connections between individuals waxed and waned there was a general sense that someone would have my back and that I could contribute by having someone else's back. It was large enough that there were generally people I didn't know around, but small enough that the regulars could enforce some of the social norms. I was able to act freely in that group with regards to speech, clothing, interests-- I didn't share the main tech-type interests of folks, but I didn't feel policed and I felt that folks were interested in what I had to say.
There were complications in the group, of course. There was a bit of a fresh meat dynamic with pretty manic pixie dream girl types. People moved from center to fringe and back again as they moved to harder-to-reach parts of the city or went head-down into new relationships. Regular group interactions, movie nights a lot of the time, got handed around but there would be fallow periods as folks burnt out on hosting or as Vancouver housing prices precluded big enough spaces to gather. Relationship drama happens in all groups and this group was no different. Consent got bumped around sometimes, as it does; my experience was that these bumps tended to be handled ok but sometimes they were just ignored.
This group was essentially my home for eight or twelve years. It was part of why I believed the world was generally good, that people were generally accepting, that if I was matter-of-fact and open about who I was that it could be normalized. When new people came into the group they got told that when I was topless it wasn't about sex and to be cool with it. That meant a lot. My kind of playfulness was allowed to exist. Did I mention I didn't feel policed?
In hindsight I think the group was pretty full of neurodiverse types, but that isn't so relevant.
Anyhow, I went to school and it took up a ton of my time so I spent less with the group. For awhile I remember we used twitter to make spontaneous meetups happen. Folks began to bleed away from the group, to have kids, to spend more time with other folks. Regular events weren't hosted as often except for big holiday parties and those often felt more like catching up with folks than being inside a living network. Some of the big personalities left or veiled themselves. I went to school again, to university, and had no energy to engage; my world was also starting to diverge.
Eventually I kept connections primarily through social media, even before I left. For years now that's been the main form of contact I have with these folks. I've been thinking of them as a loose group still, as a bunch of folks who share values and who have each other's back. I've been clinging to that.
But it's just not true. When I left Vancouver kept changing at the pace it always had. Of my dozen favourite restaurants maybe one still exists. I could no longer find a transit route or even a bike route from place to place without significant help from maps because the streets and busses just aren't there. And that social group I was part of dissolved, scattered across the country and skirled into little whirlpools of people who no longer interacted much.
Some of those folks went mostly offline and I don't know them anymore really. Some of those folks drifted away in their interests or shut me out. And some of those folks I retained and kept interacting with on social media. And.
My social media stuff has become increasingly... I hate to use this word, but toxic. It's regular for folks there to express glee in the pain of the folks they consider their opponents. One of the values I shared with these folks was concern for inequality, was the desire to help lift and support those who were at the fringes. With that in mind I ignored this shift in social media, I told myself that it was just how these folks presented with the specific incentives of online. It was social media that was the problem, there were still plenty of folks who had my back.
But now I need to admit that the change is bigger than that. Compassion and support have calcified into rigidity and exclusion. The pain of bad groups is celebrated; progress and breakthroughs are not. Deviations from or questions of the received wisdom of the group are not alright. The world is divided into them and us.
I've tolerated all this believing that I had to in order to keep connections with these folks but if this is what the connection looks like it's nothing worth keeping. Maybe it's true that in person, able to read each others' faces, conversation could flow freely and there would be room for diversity and variation. I'm not currently in that position though. It's time to reassess everyone on their own, recent, merits rather than leaning on a decade-or-two old ghost of their behaviour.
I've known it was time to find or build a new community for a couple years now. Before covid I was planning to start harvest festivals on this space; hosting is a marvelous tool for both curation of folks and influencing the tone of the gathering. My pagan community has been excellent when I'm in contact with them, they've been online a fair bit during covid, but most of those people live on the other side of the US border. It's great to visit but it can't be the heart of the community I need.
I need... barter, being able to know who needs help and contribute what I have to help. I need many-hands-make-light-work days where a goal is achieved. I need folks to have joy in their lives, and to be able to talk about that. I need folks who are kind. I need folks who can verbalize their boundaries. I need folks who are capable of celebration of good and action towards grave issues simultaneously. I need a place where there's room for different neurotypes, for different interests, for different skills and philosophical approaches to problems. I need a place where folks know each other well enough to notice and celebrate personal growth. I need to feed people. I need to be able to go somewhere when I'm upset and have someone listen to me. I need a space that accepts nuance.
I thought I had these things.
It's heavy, heavy, heavy to realize I don't.
But.
It's a relief too. I've been feeling lonely and unsupported. That's not just me. It's that-- I am lonely and unsupported in a bunch of ways.
Time to pick out some of the truly lovely people I do know and curate a space. Somehow. What even is a space when we're scattered across a continent?
I always do better once I know what the work is to do. Now I know. Now to figure out how to get started.
When I moved to Vancouver I slowly networked into a wonderful, vibrant, unconventional, supportive community of folks. For a little while each I was particularly close to two community hub-type people and by bringing them together the community grew. We took care of each other in various ways and though the connections between individuals waxed and waned there was a general sense that someone would have my back and that I could contribute by having someone else's back. It was large enough that there were generally people I didn't know around, but small enough that the regulars could enforce some of the social norms. I was able to act freely in that group with regards to speech, clothing, interests-- I didn't share the main tech-type interests of folks, but I didn't feel policed and I felt that folks were interested in what I had to say.
There were complications in the group, of course. There was a bit of a fresh meat dynamic with pretty manic pixie dream girl types. People moved from center to fringe and back again as they moved to harder-to-reach parts of the city or went head-down into new relationships. Regular group interactions, movie nights a lot of the time, got handed around but there would be fallow periods as folks burnt out on hosting or as Vancouver housing prices precluded big enough spaces to gather. Relationship drama happens in all groups and this group was no different. Consent got bumped around sometimes, as it does; my experience was that these bumps tended to be handled ok but sometimes they were just ignored.
This group was essentially my home for eight or twelve years. It was part of why I believed the world was generally good, that people were generally accepting, that if I was matter-of-fact and open about who I was that it could be normalized. When new people came into the group they got told that when I was topless it wasn't about sex and to be cool with it. That meant a lot. My kind of playfulness was allowed to exist. Did I mention I didn't feel policed?
In hindsight I think the group was pretty full of neurodiverse types, but that isn't so relevant.
Anyhow, I went to school and it took up a ton of my time so I spent less with the group. For awhile I remember we used twitter to make spontaneous meetups happen. Folks began to bleed away from the group, to have kids, to spend more time with other folks. Regular events weren't hosted as often except for big holiday parties and those often felt more like catching up with folks than being inside a living network. Some of the big personalities left or veiled themselves. I went to school again, to university, and had no energy to engage; my world was also starting to diverge.
Eventually I kept connections primarily through social media, even before I left. For years now that's been the main form of contact I have with these folks. I've been thinking of them as a loose group still, as a bunch of folks who share values and who have each other's back. I've been clinging to that.
But it's just not true. When I left Vancouver kept changing at the pace it always had. Of my dozen favourite restaurants maybe one still exists. I could no longer find a transit route or even a bike route from place to place without significant help from maps because the streets and busses just aren't there. And that social group I was part of dissolved, scattered across the country and skirled into little whirlpools of people who no longer interacted much.
Some of those folks went mostly offline and I don't know them anymore really. Some of those folks drifted away in their interests or shut me out. And some of those folks I retained and kept interacting with on social media. And.
My social media stuff has become increasingly... I hate to use this word, but toxic. It's regular for folks there to express glee in the pain of the folks they consider their opponents. One of the values I shared with these folks was concern for inequality, was the desire to help lift and support those who were at the fringes. With that in mind I ignored this shift in social media, I told myself that it was just how these folks presented with the specific incentives of online. It was social media that was the problem, there were still plenty of folks who had my back.
But now I need to admit that the change is bigger than that. Compassion and support have calcified into rigidity and exclusion. The pain of bad groups is celebrated; progress and breakthroughs are not. Deviations from or questions of the received wisdom of the group are not alright. The world is divided into them and us.
I've tolerated all this believing that I had to in order to keep connections with these folks but if this is what the connection looks like it's nothing worth keeping. Maybe it's true that in person, able to read each others' faces, conversation could flow freely and there would be room for diversity and variation. I'm not currently in that position though. It's time to reassess everyone on their own, recent, merits rather than leaning on a decade-or-two old ghost of their behaviour.
I've known it was time to find or build a new community for a couple years now. Before covid I was planning to start harvest festivals on this space; hosting is a marvelous tool for both curation of folks and influencing the tone of the gathering. My pagan community has been excellent when I'm in contact with them, they've been online a fair bit during covid, but most of those people live on the other side of the US border. It's great to visit but it can't be the heart of the community I need.
I need... barter, being able to know who needs help and contribute what I have to help. I need many-hands-make-light-work days where a goal is achieved. I need folks to have joy in their lives, and to be able to talk about that. I need folks who are kind. I need folks who can verbalize their boundaries. I need folks who are capable of celebration of good and action towards grave issues simultaneously. I need a place where there's room for different neurotypes, for different interests, for different skills and philosophical approaches to problems. I need a place where folks know each other well enough to notice and celebrate personal growth. I need to feed people. I need to be able to go somewhere when I'm upset and have someone listen to me. I need a space that accepts nuance.
I thought I had these things.
It's heavy, heavy, heavy to realize I don't.
But.
It's a relief too. I've been feeling lonely and unsupported. That's not just me. It's that-- I am lonely and unsupported in a bunch of ways.
Time to pick out some of the truly lovely people I do know and curate a space. Somehow. What even is a space when we're scattered across a continent?
I always do better once I know what the work is to do. Now I know. Now to figure out how to get started.