Community -- building one, shaping one, educating one, and sharing one -- is, of course, the raison d'etre for most blogs. I have always thought of myself as social in the extreme, a community member par excellence, simply because I could have filled my calendar 24/7 with coffee and dinner dates. And I'm talking about friends here, not acquaintances. I have those, too. As you might imagine, it was hard to get work done.
But I recently had to ask myself: is that really what community is -- all the people I know? Me thinks not. My new understanding, thanks to my burgeoning interest in web communities, and thanks to W, my recent Web guru, I can see that a community is a group of people who come together around a shared something -- ideas, purposes, passions, etc. I suppose one could argue, based on this definition, that I do belong to a bunch of different communities, such as friends who love eating, friends who love gossiping, friends who love books and movies, friends who like knowing other people who are just like them, or friends who like knowing other people who are not like them at all. These communities, however, really only exist as groups in my mind; The "members" would not necessarily see themselves as part of a specific community that, for instance, loves food because we are not a gourmet dinner club, per se. There is no mandate or stated purpose or expressed shared interest for the get together. We just like each other. And we like food. Did I mention food?
A few communities I have never built, or have avoided joining, are the ones formed around art and wage work. I avoid art communities for a number of reasons, most of which boil down to my own insecurities. I have this critique of the art community (as if there were one monolithic group out there) that the art community is not very NICE. That kind of critique, shamefully, says more about me than about it. Like, hello, am I five?! I make these gross oversimplifications and quick judgments because I don't feel I belong. And I don't feel I belong because I don't feel good enough to belong. And the reasons for that are for my therapist to know and not for me to expound here. Suffice it to say, I distance myself, tar the community, and stand sulking on the sidelines wishing I had more courage to jump into the fray. As for work communities, whenever I've had interesting jobs, such as working for Mozilla Mark and CSI Tonya (in the old days of Web Networks and rabble.ca), I gained entry into their world of friends and colleagues (usually one and the same) and met the most amazing folks -- fired-up, engaged, purposeful, funny, insightful people I placed on pedestals because they were following their blisses, and I was too scared to follow mine. But, instead of joining their ranks, I decided, once again, I was not up to scratch, and I bowed out.
In a nutshell, that's how it works for me: either I feel superior (nicer) or inferior (dumber), and either one inevitably leads to my withdrawal. Dont' get me wrong, I am still social; I enjoy the dinner parties and I participate in conversation enthusiastically, asking questions probing enough that, as Tonya says, I could give Oprah a run for her money, but I shy away from actually joining the group for fear that I have nothing to offer in return. Always the interviewer, I keep myself ignorant so that I don't have to actually contribute and expose my ignorance. It's a vicious cycle. And it's one I hope to break.
When I turned 40, my Facebook status update declared this: There is no giving up after 40. With that promise trumpeted to my 123 Facebook friends, I felt I had made a marriage-like public commitment which I was on the hook to honour.
So, here I am. I'm not sure yet what community I'm building here with this blog, or even if I'm building one. But I am following a few other online communities so that I can at least find out what's up out there. I have to say, what I love about the online communities is being able to follow the conversation and jump in when I feel safe, and being an observer when I need to be. I did publish a query on the Mozilla site asking about their beta test of Ubiquitous yesterday, which I wanted to help test, but when I downloaded it, I got a message telling me it was not compatible with my Mac. Not compatible. My worst fear. But since I'm no longer giving up, I sent a query to the Ubiquitous site users asking if that was really the case, if I am really incompatible.
As a girl who finds techies excessively sexy, just posting a query to this community was exhilarating (imagine, a whole community of techies! Do they have their own online dating site????). Still, what if someone replies? Does that mean I've been acknowledged as having a legitimate question? Is THIS the community I secretly want to belong to even though I have not one techie bone in my body? Maybe I could get a job as their interpreter? Or matchmaker? Which reminds me, I need to go check the site and see if I got a reply. I blush to think of the possibilities . . .
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