Sunday, September 6, 2009

somewhere to belong...

In recent days I’ve been mulling over the idea of community and what that means to me. I’m still not sure yet what the answer is… but I have time on my hands and I am taking steps to find out…

I didn’t go to college, and therefore was never part of any collegiate community. I became a mom at a very young age, not many of my friends were having babies at that time, mostly busy with their collegiate communities. And since I was single, I didn’t much have time to join mommies groups, or have play dates with stay at home moms, I was too busy trying to make a buck and find a meal; there goes those communities. And although I have many GLBT friends and attended several Gay Pride parades while living in Seattle, I wouldn’t pretend to be part of the GLBT community. I did join the Seattle Flickr Meetup for a time, but I didn’t really feel like I fit in and so I didn’t stay long enough to call that community… There is my Facebook community consisting of classmates from Junior/Senior high school and ex coworkers that became friends. I am grateful to be back in touch with many of my old classmates, but in some ways it has reminded me that I was always on the fringe of that particular community. Then there is the group of people who are now friends but were once ex coworkers, and although some of them became my friends while we were all working at the same place… I would never say it developed into any sort of community.

So here I am wondering where is my “group of people having common interests” and how do I fit in?

Having moved to Pittsburgh recently, and spending a great amount of time learning about the people and places through blogs (even having met my friend Jenny through her blog)… I came across other women blogging who also live in Pittsburgh… sounds like a community I might fit into: I am a woman, I blog and I live in Pittsburgh. So I asked if I could join, someone sent me an invite, I accepted. Now I am at least a part of this community. I’m looking forward to contributing, and maybe even finding through the blog a better idea of what community means to me and where I fit into the bigger picture.

4 comments:

  1. hi and welcome. i've never really fit in anywhere. it used to bother me a lot but now i embrace my eclectic nature most days. not all, but most.

    it would be a shame to be stuck in one little box.

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  2. What's great about this group is that it's a place where you can post about whatever interests you, your obsessions, delights, work, whatever.

    And what's most interesting to me is that there are all sorts of people who check in on this blog, or happen upon it. So, you'll never know who'll chime in on your posts.

    Sometimes I feel like I've fit into too many places, now I'm trying to fit into myself.

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  3. Thanks everyone for your kind words. It means a lot.

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