Outside Looking In

# 10 Reverb

Prompt: 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?


I never have been much of a joiner. I try and I fail most the time. I loose interest or my good intentions become washed out or my expectations are not met. I have a glamorized and totally delusional image of myself that I carry around in my head. I think I have magical powers that cause me to become involved in all sorts of endeavors that I have little business atttempting. But, like I said I am delusional.

To tell the truth, I am a trifle bit of a loner. This is a good thing because the tendency has served me well. To pick up roots and move (and baby, I have moved over and over again) has not tramatized me (much).

One move really stands out. When AOL shut down AOL Journal's and scattered us to the four corners of the Internet. If I felt really involved in a community, it was AOL J-Land. I began journaling on line a few weeks into their kick off and loved it. Absolutely loved it. At that time it was a small community that every day highlighted five journalist's. Every day. Five journalist! We got to know each other pretty well in the beginning.

Nothing that wonderful and intimate and worthy can stay that way very long and it took a hit several years later by allowing advertising on the journals without the permission of the writers. Anarchy responded. People left in droves and set up a "community" outside J-Land on Blogger. It did not work. But AOL was delivered a blow it never recovered from. The best of the best had jumped ship. Then it was totally shut down several years after.

Enough of that.

This sense of community, trying to find, fit in and become a part of clearly alludes me. I have hooked up with the Little Black Dress Club in the area and loved the first gathering at Applebees. But the recent attempts to get together and have a Bunco club, or even have a Holiday Open House have been thwarted by some by-laws or such nonsense. That saddens me because there was this one woman who practically promised me a Key Lime Martini. Bummer.

And my stab at Home Based Business was almost a disaster. I felt like I was plunked down into a sorority house. Yikes and no thank you. I will venture out on my own and do my own thing (loner and hard headed).

I can not get a grasp on the community of belonging in this area. It's too weird for me. Weird in a way that I have never been so surrounded by people who do not bend. Who see Black and White. There is only one way to do things and that is the official and directed way. No variance. That's military.

I don't foresee the future being much different. I sure would like to play Bunco while drinking a martini though.