Day 7: Finding Community

The #Reverb10 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 was delighted to see this prompt in my inbox yesterday. Didn't have time to get to it what with classes, draft grading, and a great colloquium with K-12 teachers in Western Maine, but I promised I'd return to it, and so I have.

This post is less an explanatory post and more an expression of gratitude.

For me, my new place of community in 2010 has been twitter. I have never been someone to fully embrace online communication [see previous posts--I'm a nineteenth century historian--I love the tangible]. Sure, I'm occasionally on facebook to keep up with siblings, friends, grad school pals and former students, and of course I email, mostly professionally. But I've never thought of the online world for me as community. I'm connected with the people I email with in real ways. I know everybody I'm "friends" with on facebook. But this year, at the behest of a friend who works in social media and marketing [@peplau] I joined the site, not sure what I would find.

What I found, to my tremendous surprise, was a series of communities and conversations I was eager to get involved with. Here were all of my favorite museums, libraries and historical societies. Here were others who worked in my field and were interested in digital humanities. Here were others who like to cook, read, make snarky comments, follow the news, and I could follow them, and they could follow me back. Through twitter I've find out about great new restaurants, gotten terrific recommendations about B&B's, found new art shows to attend, and kept track of conferences and growing new fields [THATCamp comes to mind].

And most importantly, to my great surprise, here were the Mainers I'd been longing to meet. When my husband and I moved up here 3 years ago for me to take an academic position at a local college, I connected with my colleagues and my students and my athletes, all of widely varying ages, but I had a very difficult time meeting people my age--other 30-somethings. Lo and behold, here they were, on twitter. And sure, they could have stayed my online community, but one of the lovely things about twitter, especially in Maine, is that people are into meeting in real life. And so, stepping out of my comfort zone, my twitter community has moved from strictly online, to real. In fact, I'm having lunch tomorrow with two delightful, smart, and funny women I'm grateful to have met via twitter. And the best thing--because we've been conversing in tweets--it's like we already knew each other. And it's lovely.

As far as community for 2011.... Well, I suppose there's two things I wish--to get back into yoga in a serious way--and rejoin that community. And also, and this is a true wish, to get back to ceramics and pottery, and re-enter that community. That's intention. We'll see.