Reverb 11, December Twelfth

Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2011? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2012?

We moved to the San Fernando Valley in 1996; since then, the only neighbors I've known lived next door to me at Vassar.  Every year, I get a little more grateful that I grew up in a true community; even though my beliefs have changed somewhat since then, I remain grateful that I was raised in the community church.  It doesn't just take a village to raise a child, folks; it takes a village to make a home.

Junior year of college, we lived in this prefab house on the south end of campus.  As far removed as it was from the rest of campus, it was often a hub of activity for our massive group of friends.  I was always at my most peaceful when that house was packed to the gills and spilling people out onto the porch.  At least once during every such night, I would sneak off to my room for ten minutes. As peaceful as the presence of my friends made me, I still often needed a breath of air that wasn't being exhaled by someone else.  I'd sit in my chair, scan my email, and smile as I listened to the laughter and the music from down the hall; once I felt re-centered, I'd go back out and share the laughs.

Introvert though I am, I have always needed a community around me.  It's why I am Facebook-dependent.  In 2003, my Vassar community became a Vassar diaspora (if that isn't fun to say, you're mispronouncing "diaspora"); I crave the atavistic sense of connection my Facebook meanderings occasionally manage to produce.


This year, I have not discovered new community; that search is ongoing, as is the internal struggle to generate the motivation to intensify the search.  I've missed my weekly 12-Step meetings almost all semester, and AA is the only community to which I presently belong that meets in person.  (People often ask me if I find meetings when I'm on the road; I know I could, but it's just not as important to me when I'm out there as is rest.)  Now that I'm home for a while, I'm excited to get back to my home groups; less exciting, but equally necessary, is the prospect of finding new meetings so I can meet some new people.

Of course, there's the community in which I participate almost daily - if you could call us a community.  I mean, if we were all gathered in person (which must happen, folks, it must), we'd fit around a large coffee table.  I speak, natch, of my ex-Greader crew.  Emails fly to and fro daily, concerning the thoughtful and the thoughtless - the sublime and the ridiculous (WWFD?) - and every possible step in between.  I'll say it here, my friends, if I never say it again: your presence in my inbox is a major component of my sanity.


Next year, I'm hoping to find some folks to play softball with - or maybe even sing some a cappella.  I put out feelers for both over this past year, but a) I didn't look that hard, and therefore b) was not successful.  Like I said, I need to intensify the search.  And once again, the important step here is internal.