Reverb13 Day 13: Community. (Lack thereof.)
In 2014, how could you explore what community means to you? Where might the alchemy be?
The whole concept of community is a tricky one for me to discuss and write about.
Community has come up in previous Reverbs. I even mentioned it this very month in a previous post from this year’s Reverb. It also comes up on message boards and in articles I read about various subjects. I hear the stories of friends of mine and the support they get from their communities, and how much it means to them. The building of community is considered crucial to everything from our success in any field, our personal happiness and even our very health. Everywhere one looks, the concept of community is not far behind.
I can only say now what I have previously said when the subject of community comes up; I do not feel that I am a member of any solid, supportive community, despite previous best efforts.
As I have said, projects and endeavors I have undertaken in the past few years have been met with almost zero interest, support, or assistance from the relevant community. For whatever reasons I simply don’t inspire communities to be a part of my life and my work, and that goes for many online forums as well.
For you network-minded millennial who may be reading, I will cut off your first question by stating that yes, I have over the years attempted to improve communities by offering myself to same. I’ve invested time, attention, energy, once in a great while money in the activities, plans, visions, projects and aspirations of various communities as a whole, and individuals within those communities. I still support the notion of doing so, when the investment yields some kind of eventual return.
But truly I don’t do that as much as I used to, because in a vast majority of the cases, that engagement has been one way.
If you read any of the above posts I have linked to, you’ll find that I have never been certain why I lack community. I consider various different possibilities, such as the fact that I am not charismatic, or handsome, or rich. But then I think of plenty examples of people who are also lacking in all of those qualities and still inspire certain loyalties. In other words, I may not be a pleasant fellow as defined by most in society, but being pleasant is obviously not a prerequisite to community success. (I maintain I am in fact a pleasant person much of the time, however.)
May greatest pains in the last five years have dealt most often with being rejected by a community to which I thought I was attached. At least I’ve learned, hopefully, to never again assume I am part of a community.
But the attempts go on. I started an introvert group this year. I’m helping to manage a small arts center-to build a community there. (Though a lot of people I know already are involved.) I continue to explore the web for message boards and blogs that might welcome me into their community. I engage interesting people on Twitter in hopes of starting conversations or making connections.
Yet I can’t deny that over the last year or two, I am trending more and more away from community. It sounds counterproductive in a sense, and maybe it is, I don’t know. I only know that as communities continue to hold me at arms length, and I remain unable to infiltrate them, the appeal of doing things that require only myself increases. I write. I will probably self-publish my fiction, so I don’t have to convince some overworked agent that my novel will put her kid through college. I’m writing a one-man stage play, (and have ideas for several others) so I will not have to rely on people wanting to join me in my productions. (Getting them to come see them remains a problem, but that’s another post.)
I’m not a hermit. I’m not a misanthrope or an isolationist. One of the few lines written by John Dunne that I like is “No man is an island,” and I agree with that. But at the same time, I can’t continue to look for or build community, when community doesn’t want me. That’s a waste of resources better spent elsewhere. I’ll create what I can without any help, and engage the individual friends I have when I can. (Distance is an issue with most of my friends more than anything else.) But community? Alchemy? I would be lying to my readers if I were t0 pretend I had a true answer to this prompt.
Reverb 13: Day 12: Muddied by the Universe
Today, identify something muddy that kept recurring for you throughout 2013, and then ask yourself this: What’s the clear truth underneath this damn mud if I finally wash myself clean?
I think loneliness is a type of mud. And contrary to the popular misconception, introverts can get lonely. In fact it often happens in crowds.
I guess the clear truth under said mud is that I am in need of company in my life that is more in tune with my own personal world view. It’s good to be eclectic, and to establish friendships and working relationships with those we have little in common with. Sometimes, at least. But I believe my spiritual shelves are now fully stocked with purely professional contacts, party types, conservatives, religious people, well-to-do, and various other types of people whom I can enjoy but can relate to only so much.
The fact that I know many people but continue to feel as though I need different company is, to me, the Universe’s way of splattering me with that mud. A mud that, when wiped clean will reveal a me that needs to connect more often with those who don’t challenge my censor button, or my patience, or my manners. But people who simply come from a similar mold, and who desire to be with those of the same mold sometimes. I need more “me-type” people in my life. Not better people, just…”me” people.
That’s a short and not very profound answer, but it fits today.
Reverb13 Day 11: To Boldly Go
What challenges lie ahead in 2014? How might you meet them boldly?
I feel sorry for anyone reading these posts who may be tired of hearing me mention my writing. But I am, after all, a writer, and though there are several challenges about which I could write today, I think writing is still the most appropriate.
Maybe I should amend that somewhat. Maybe I should say, publishing is my challenge for 2014.
I have thought for most of this year that next year would be the year I finished my “final” revisions in Flowers for Dionysus and began to immerse myself in the publishing process. Which means I will have to decide quite soon if I am going to self-publish, seek an agent, or attempt both over the course of the year.
For those who don’t know, both routes have essentially the same amount of backside pain involved. Particularly in marketing. Agents and the traditional model take far, far, far longer to boot. But for some there is a relief with such involvement.
Now is not the time for me to debate the merits of one method over the other. (That will come.) Rather today I mention only that the concept of getting my fiction, particulars my first novel out there to readers will be one of the top challenges for me in 2014.
So, how to meet this challenge in a bold manner, as per today’s prompt?
Probably by ignoring more than acting, at least at first. Boldly ignoring the significant part of my mind that finds the entire mess confusing and distasteful. To not think a great deal about the elephant in the room when it comes to either getting an agent or self-publishing. The elephant being that I’m not used to, or adept at selling things. I must pretend I am not feeling what I feel for a while.
But I can’t just ignore parts of my own mind. I will also have to boldly ignore the conventional wisdom of either method of publishing, in favor of what makes sense to my own mind. Some of it may work, and some of it may not, but I must plow through the general advice and “requirements” of publishing dictated to me, and all writers by the establishments in either camp.
Targeted marketing, finding niches, data analysis, platform growth, charts, graphs, sales projections? That all sounds fantastic. But so does solar power, and I don’t have the slightest ability to build or even procure solar panels for my home. So I stay warm with what I’ve got, and hope for the best as time moves on. I’ll have to do the same with publishing and marketing. Use what I have, not what I don’t have.
I will be seeking some advice. I will have to. But I already know a great deal of what professionals will say, (I’ve read up on the topic for years) and much of it will only upset and discourage me anyway. If it means I plow through certain conventions and expectations at the cost of one avenue or advancement, so be it, but I have to do this worrisome, unpleasant task my way if I am to get anywhere at all with it. And if you ask me, that’s not being stubborn or obstinate. That’s not flipping the bird to those who have come before me, nor is it refusing to learn. It’s simply couching what I learn in terms of what I know I can do, instead of beating myself into submission in order to do something I know I cannot.
In other words, it will be more about this author getting his works out there, and less about evolving and becoming something totally different at my core simply because it is trendy to do so.
If you ask me, that’s rather bold.
Reverb13 Day Ten: Disengage Auto-Pilot
Living life on auto-pilot can feel disorienting and dull. How did you cultivate a life worth loving during 2013? How can you turn off your auto-pilot button in 2014?
Truth be told I could have probably done a better job at specifically cultivating a “life worth loving” in the last year. It’s not something I think about specifically very often, though I do have moments and activities and certain events that I love at least a few times each year. Those tend to arise in a more natural way, however, as opposed to my cultivating them into existence.
I have this year begun the process of determining if I suffer from defined, clinical anxiety. (I have suspected I might for a while now.) This means finding a professional counselor to help me determine whether or not this is so. Not an easy process. And it has been made all the more troublesome to me because after some research and a personal recommendation, the first professional I went to was a total disaster. Thankfully I needed no more than the initial consultation to determine that, but it means I’ve had to start the process over, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get started this year after all.
So if not cultivating, perhaps I could call that “weeding” in a sense. Or a tune-up if that works better. Making life more lovable by determining if I suffer from something that can be alleviated. This in a sense relates to auto-pilot I suppose because inertia makes it easier to just keep living each day with my anxieties. I don’t enjoy them, but when I think about all of the things I have to go through to officially see if I have a clinical form of anxiety, I can’t help but thinking my life would be easier just left as it is. Auto-pilot. But I must disengage that auto-pilot in order to course correct.
So, once that process is at last officially off of the ground and doing its (hopefully) good for me, that is one way I will be shutting off auto-pilot in 2014. Thriving instead of surviving and all of that.
Reverb13 Day 9: Inspirational People
Who inspired you in 2013? And why? What gifts did they give you? And how will you carry these forward in to 2014?
Inspiration is a tricky subject with me. I tend to be more inspired by events or even thoughts and ideas, than I am by individual people. I can have deep respect for someone’s situation, obstacles and achievements without feeling personally inspired by them. Their story, after all, is not my story. Though on some broad level I intellectually understand that such people can be examples of overcoming the odds, (if they can do it you can do it!) I tend to view such people as the one-legged man who scales Everest, or the woman who overcame her mental illness to become a published writer as circumstances isolated from my own.
Maybe I don’t look closely enough, or maybe I am just a colder, more shallow person. Or maybe this is just another manifestation of my unique, sometimes strange perception of life. I don’t know.
All of that being said, I do have at least a partial answer for this prompt, and it is a surprising one: Pope Francis.
I am not a Roman Catholic. I disagree with the church, (and by extension any Pope) in regards to many moral and social issues. But within that framework, this current Pope has said and done many things that have gotten my attention, and at times even touched me on a personal level.
His attention and prioritization of the poor. His refusal to demonize homosexuals even as he disagrees with them. His willingness to admonish the rampant excesses of capitalism. The fact that he still does not use the luxurious papal apartments, but rather lives in a simple hotel within the Vatican. These are perspectives not shared by many previous popes. At least not in as vocal a fashion as this pope.
So I admire, respect, and in some cases, deeply appreciate what Pope Francis is doing and saying.
But his viewpoints are not what inspires me per se. What I find inspiring, rather, is the deep conviction with which he not only expresses but lives his beliefs. The humility. The unflappability. And perhaps most of all, doing all of this in the face of a Vatican establishment, namely the Curia, that is not the most welcoming of his speeches and reforms, sometimes to the point of talking back the Pontiff’s comments the following day, so as not to allow him to appear too “different”.
I don’t know what goes on behind the closed doors of the Vatican. Nor can I sympathize with how it feels to believe in and cling to an infallible pope, as again I am not Catholic. But I can be inspired by acts of faith, charity and love. Though the possibility always exists that he could be for whatever reason faking all of it, I’m willing to take Pope Francis at face value, and be inspired by the man.
As for what gifts the man can give to me in 2013…his gifts to Catholics and the poor are of course of far greater significance. But I do think he serves as a reminder, and solid example of the importance and the power of knowing one’s convictions, and striving everyday to live them and share them, regardless of how inconvenient it may be to some. The courage of conscience, even if that conscience is not my own, contains a power that can sometimes transcend difference and circumstances. Doing the work one feels they were born to do in service to what they feel is right in this world. That’s the inspiration of Pope Francis, and others like him in this world. I will take these lessons with me into 2014 and beyond as I follow my own convictions in pursuit of service.
Ty Unglebower 