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jenettWelcome to our eighth salon discussion thread. Wander in, invite a friend to come along, and chat! (Not sure what's going on? Here, have a brief FAQ.) You can find previous ones in my salon tag. Please take a quick look at the reminders at the bottom of this post, too.
Quality of life: what does it mean for you?
I was thinking, walking home from work the other day, that there's a lot of different kinds of things that make up quality of life, the "This is a good day" and "I like how I'm living".
In my current job, I don't make much money (especially given the amount of education required). But I live half a mile from work, in a gorgeous rural New England town where pretty much every view could be on a postcard. (And that's before you get to anything significantly scenic.) There's a downtown grocery store with local produce, and farmer's markets, and all sorts of other things.
I have a job that I mostly leave at work (I mean, I keep thinking about technology and libraries and information pretty much all the time, but that's because I love it, not because I have to bring work home). I have the world's most endearing and adorable cat.
But I also know that these things aren't necessarily what other people would choose (or what I'd choose at other points in my life, or if I lived in a different place, or had more money to play with.)
Things I'm watching: I'm currently rewatching season 3 of Doctor Who (I've been a fan since before I knew you could be: I grew up watching Tom Baker from under a chair in the living room.) Tonight, I'm going to go see the Joss Whedon Much Ado About Nothing for the second time so I can go with a friend (and because, on the whole, I would like to encourage people to do more projects of that kind.) What're you watching? Why is it interesting to or fun for you?
(This means I'll be out from 5ish until 9:30ish tonight. I assume you can all manage in my absence.)
Quick reminders
-jjhunter did a great guide to following conversations here on Dreamwidth. Also a roundup of regular Dreamwidth events.
- If you want to post anonymously, please pick a name (any name you like) that we can call you - it makes it more conversational and helps if we have more than one anon post.
- Base rule remains "Leave the conversation better than you found it, or at least not worse". If you're nervous about that, I'd rather you say something and we maybe sort out confusion later than have you not say something. (I've heard from a few people who worry they're going to say something that's going to be taken weirdly. If it helps, I am usually around and if there's a thing you'd like to get out in the conversation, but you're not sure how, feel free to PM or email or IM me, and I'll nudge the conversation that direction.)
- The FAQ still has useful stuff, and I added some thoughts about getting conversations going a few weeks ago.
- Comments tend to trickle in over the course of a day or two, with a few nearly a week later: you might enjoy checking back later if you're not tracking the conversation.
Quality of life: what does it mean for you?
I was thinking, walking home from work the other day, that there's a lot of different kinds of things that make up quality of life, the "This is a good day" and "I like how I'm living".
In my current job, I don't make much money (especially given the amount of education required). But I live half a mile from work, in a gorgeous rural New England town where pretty much every view could be on a postcard. (And that's before you get to anything significantly scenic.) There's a downtown grocery store with local produce, and farmer's markets, and all sorts of other things.
I have a job that I mostly leave at work (I mean, I keep thinking about technology and libraries and information pretty much all the time, but that's because I love it, not because I have to bring work home). I have the world's most endearing and adorable cat.
But I also know that these things aren't necessarily what other people would choose (or what I'd choose at other points in my life, or if I lived in a different place, or had more money to play with.)
Things I'm watching: I'm currently rewatching season 3 of Doctor Who (I've been a fan since before I knew you could be: I grew up watching Tom Baker from under a chair in the living room.) Tonight, I'm going to go see the Joss Whedon Much Ado About Nothing for the second time so I can go with a friend (and because, on the whole, I would like to encourage people to do more projects of that kind.) What're you watching? Why is it interesting to or fun for you?
(This means I'll be out from 5ish until 9:30ish tonight. I assume you can all manage in my absence.)
Quick reminders
-
jjhunter did a great guide to following conversations here on Dreamwidth. Also a roundup of regular Dreamwidth events. - If you want to post anonymously, please pick a name (any name you like) that we can call you - it makes it more conversational and helps if we have more than one anon post.
- Base rule remains "Leave the conversation better than you found it, or at least not worse". If you're nervous about that, I'd rather you say something and we maybe sort out confusion later than have you not say something. (I've heard from a few people who worry they're going to say something that's going to be taken weirdly. If it helps, I am usually around and if there's a thing you'd like to get out in the conversation, but you're not sure how, feel free to PM or email or IM me, and I'll nudge the conversation that direction.)
- The FAQ still has useful stuff, and I added some thoughts about getting conversations going a few weeks ago.
- Comments tend to trickle in over the course of a day or two, with a few nearly a week later: you might enjoy checking back later if you're not tracking the conversation.
Tags:
Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-24 05:11 pm (UTC)As I understand it, community cannot happen without individuals - how can we have a group without people to populate that group? - and groups with a strong sense of community within the group get that sense of community from synergy: the group together feels like more than the sum of its parts. It has an 'identity' of some kind that provides ready common ground for people within the group to more easily connect with each other, and feel confident that investing emotionally, socially, and/or financially in the group / other people in the group will be reciprocated in some way.
tl;dr How do you define community? Where do you look to find a sense of it offline? How might we strengthen communities that already exist, or plant the seeds of new ones to grow what we yearn for?
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-24 05:28 pm (UTC)But I think some of it is also openness to the possibility, wherein I get to tell a story. Back in February, the co-worker I like best and I went to a movie (in the next town about 45 minutes away that has the art film house, and also a very good Mexican restaurant in the same building - it's where we're seeing Much Ado tonight.) And we'd both had pretty lousy weeks for various reasons.
It's a Friday night, and they're busy, so we have about a 30 minute wait for a table. And about 15 minutes in, we start talking to a woman in her 40s who's there to study and work on something. And when her table comes up, she invites us to join her.
Which is, as it turns out, totally unlike all three of us. But we have an awesome time, and a certain amount of drinking of margaritas, and when my friend and I have to go to the movie, we make plans to do it again a month later. When the other woman brings a friend.
And then we met in June, when they brought another friend. And we just did it again last Friday, and have one planned for Labor Day weekend (longer outing! In Portland! It'll be awesome!) We all totally look forward to them, and it's so totally unlike *all* of us, and yet it's so totally an awesome thing. (We aim at roughly monthly, but my co-worker works a 10 month contract and travels a lot in the summer.)
(I'm the youngest, at 37: my co-worker is the oldest at 62. One of us is just getting into a new house post-divorce, the woman we originally met in February had a really bad couple of years and now is in school to go do awesome stuff. Two of us travel a lot, the other three not so much, and so on. But we're all curious about the world, and interested in talking, and it just *works*.)
I have no idea how you make that kind of thing happen, I really don't. [1] Except not to shut the door on the possibility when it hits you over the head.
But I'm glad that we said yes, and that we keep saying yes, because really, it's totally awesome. And it's very relaxing to be with people where there aren't a lot of expectations except that we show up, talk, and have a good time.
It's not quite all the community I want: I am very aware that I'm short on 'people who could help if I had a medical crisis who are nearby and handy'. But it's a not-bad start, for people I can see in person regularly.
[1] Well. Actually. I sort of do: it is a very functional solution to a bit of magical work I did more than two years ago. But I'm not sure that's actually useful to anyone else.)
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 11:28 am (UTC)Your topics so far have been brilliant, and I'm curious about the process of how you come to them, and what goes into framing them the way you do. Am also thinking of the commentator a few threads down sorting out relationship stuff, and wondering if there might be a way to host a discussion as part of the salon project or elsewhere talking about types of relationships people have with each other, and how to go about finding them / getting more out of the ones you already have. Not just romantic relationship - mentor-mentee, student-teacher, parent-child, colleague-colleague, sibling-sibling, and so forth. How we think about relationships; how our relationships with our biological families & our found families & our work colleagues & our teachers & our neighbors set our expectations for what relationships can be, and how expanding the types of relationships we might meaningful might help us recognize certain dynamics we get into with people. (A boss is a very different kettle of fish than a parent, for example, and a mentor isn't the same as a teacher who gives you a grade.)
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 11:58 am (UTC)And part of it being 'thing I host in my own journal' is that I want what I pick each week to be very much my choice, not a democratic decision, as it were :) I certainly want to pick things that interest other people, but opening up the list feels more like "I am obliged to talk about X because lots of people want it" and that starts feeling like work to host, which is not what I want to feel. (Even if people pick really good topics, which y'all would.)
All of that said, I do keep a really rough list of suggestions, and have tucked yours away. However, I'm fairly sure (because of my own schedule, the fact I'm working on getting some specific things done before vacation mid-August, etc.) that I won't be up for it before I get back from that trip.
(Also, I have something fairly specific in mind for the 2 year anniversary of my starting my current job, on the 7th, and I've got a couple of other things I'm mulling for the other relevant week. Plus one for when I'm actually on vacation.)
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 12:36 pm (UTC)Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 12:49 pm (UTC)Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 12:58 pm (UTC)(For people who don't know, I'm a priestess in an initiatory religious witchcraft tradition: Wicca is a close enough first approximation. I haven't done much teaching or any group work since I moved to Maine, but it's a long-term goal of mine.)
And yet, in that setting, there has to be a dynamic balance between 'these are the specifics of the tradition and practices I value and want to do' (i.e. there's stuff bigger than me I don't get to change on a whim), and 'if I want to do them with other people, I don't get to have everything exactly my way' and 'but if I'm hosting in my home (as is common in small Pagan groups), then there's a bunch of practical things I get to decide on, because My House'. Which is to say, it gets a little complicated.
Plus the whole part about 'if I'm going to put energy and attention into this on a regular basis, it needs to be something I find enjoyable, or I won't manage to do it in the bad weeks, or will resent the fact it stops me doing things I enjoy in the bad weeks'.
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 01:14 pm (UTC)Apologies for going off on a bit of a tangent -- brain is all over the place at the moment -- but a thing I keep on and on and on coming back to is the Maori word turangawaewae, lit. "a place to stand". I wish I wish I wish I could find a word for it that didn't feel so appropriative -- I first came across it in the context of Te Papa/Our Place, New Zealand's national museum (I would like to take a moment to note how much I love that Aotearoa works so hard at making public institutions - and life in general - bilingual), and as a concept it is actually such a big deal in terms of my quality of life on an individual and on a communal basis. By which I mean, the sense of being rooted, of having place, of being sure in oneself, of self-trust -- that's why I'm so invested in topography and bedrock, because insofar as I have gods these days (I'm ex-Catholic), they are in the high places and in the wild places, and that sense of connection is really important to me. I've mixed this in with my precise flavour of geology, and with the homeland - Cornwall is home to me, and it's lots of granite, of exposed mantle, and it's volcanics rather than sediments that make me feel like I've got a firm enough place to stand that I might move the world. It's the same in community settings - the awareness of what I know, of how I fit in, of being a small person in a large space, is spiritual and grounding at once; it is humbling; and it makes me more useful, and more comfortable, because I know what I can help with, who I can ask for help, and so on, and so forth. Erm. This might be more coherent if I weren't one hefty dose of opiates down, sorry!
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 02:42 pm (UTC)(I have been thinking on and off re: possible panel at con.txt or Wiscon or elsewhere re: Online Community Building 101 where people might share tips & tricks re: creating vibrant communities that are also set up in a way that's sustainable to admin / facilitate; the
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 03:41 pm (UTC)Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-24 06:16 pm (UTC)Interestingly though, I've found that having really concrete ideas about what I want my community to be like before forming it doesn't work. For example, I'm a fairly logical thinker and tend to distrust much of what I call magical thinking. So it wouldn't generally occur to me to look for community amongst those who subscribe to it. But over the years I have found that I actually do fit in well with people who tend to be into those things which I think are hokum. I just end up the Doubting Thomas of the group! (I want to believe, which may help. But my brain just likes evidence and studies and seems disinclined to have mystical experiences.)
And then there communities/friendship groups which, on paper, seem perfect for me. Their members like the same things I do, they have similar world views, are at similar places in their lives, etc. But somehow, we just don't like each other. (Oddly, I tend to find that many of the people who are most similar to me in interests etc also tend to be really cliquish and judgmental. I'm not sure what that says about me....)
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-24 06:34 pm (UTC)Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 12:53 pm (UTC)Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 02:15 pm (UTC)Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 02:15 pm (UTC)Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-26 03:28 pm (UTC)physically safe & physically accessible housing/daily living:
emotionally/socially safe + supportive housing/daily living:
More generally - if you had your druthers, how many housemates would you ideally live with? Beyond financial ability to pay rent & threshold shared values, what do you look for in a housemate? May be worth listing out things you value in people you have other types of relationships with, and then circling back to what you think makes for a good housemate. What kinds of people make for good work colleagues? What kinds of people make for good friends? etc.
(I'm beginning to suspect myself that a good housemate for me, at least, is somewhere between 'potential good friend' & 'potential good work colleague' territory, and I'd be interested to hear if that fits your experience / thinking at all. And of course, I haven't mentioned a thing about family, but attachment styles can be a factor in non-romantic relationships too, especially when you're in a smaller household (<4 people).)
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-25 01:32 am (UTC)I agree that it's possible to have some control over whether you have a community of friends and friendly acquaintances local to you. There can be barriers, definitely, as others have articulated, but it's not where I feel powerless. Where I feel powerless is all the people who affect my daily life simply by virtue of living near me. People who I have a connection with not by desire or compatibility but by circumstance. We're connected by the place and its vagaries (road construction, water main breaks, town politics, weather events, etc.), but beyond that are there any shared values? How would we even find out? What can we do about values which are incompatible, given that terminating the relationship (as you would with a person you had a choice about dealing with) is not possible?
I'm having a hard time getting at what I'm trying to get at, so will stop now and go to bed instead.
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-25 09:06 am (UTC)Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-28 04:02 pm (UTC)So, once summer starts (or even on unusually warm spring or fall evenings), people around here sometimes set off fireworks. Fireworks are illegal in this state. There's no set time when this happens, could be anytime between dusk and 3am. Fireworks, when unexpected, cause me a very uncomfortable stress reaction. And since I don't know when they're coming, I often end up in a state of heightened arousal just waiting for the pops and bangs. I scan weather forecasts, hoping for rainy nights. I sleep with the windows closed and the AC on when I'd much rather use a window fan because I know I'll be woken up if fireworks start and I won't get to make up the sleep. I hate this.
The people setting off the fireworks are members of my community; I doubt anyone comes from far and wide just to do this in my neighborhood. I have no way of knowing who they are. I could, I suppose, try to go and knock on the doors of everyone within a mile or so radius and explain the effect that it has on me. And/or I could try some sort of public outreach campaign - flyers? letters to the editor? a presentation at the library? hold a placard outside Town Hall? - to try and persuade people not to do it. (In actual fact I probably couldn't do these things because I don't have the time and energy for them right now.)
But even if I did these things, would that mean 100% definitely no more fireworks? No. Or even most of them? I doubt it.
What I mean by trusting my community is trusting all these people (*all* of them) not do to things which are wrong and do harm. As I said above, I don't think that's possible without either drastically limiting the number of people (i.e. very rural indeed) or insuring that the people have a pre-existing agreement on acceptable behavior and communication protocols in case things go wrong, as well as a general orientation toward thoughtfulness and respect for others (i.e. cohousing, likely also in a rural setting).
It is probably the case that I desire a level of control higher than most people's (or I have lower tolerance for certain types of issue than most people).
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-25 11:49 am (UTC)Or if not everything, at least a fairly wide subset of it. There are comment sections, and those are like comment sections on any other newspaper (which is to say, the comment quality is highly mixed indeed) but even those are informative (and it's rare you get more than 20 comments on a piece, so it's usually not that dire even when the quality's iffy or people are being very stuck on their particular POV.)
I also love the New England town government thing of Town Meeting, but that's something that doesn't always transplant well elsewhere. (Reminds me, I ought to go this year: I feel like I finally have enough of an idea about the town it'd be relevant.)
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-28 02:38 pm (UTC)Arlington is one of the biggest towns in Massachusetts, and, like most of the towns around here, we have a representative town meeting. So I can't just roll up to town meeting and have my say; instead, I vote for precinct representatives who in theory represent me. The problem is, not very many people run for town meeting, and not very many people vote in TM elections. Some precincts (not mine) even have vacant seats. I have written to my town meeting reps over issues from time to time. Some of them reply, some don't bother. Some will listen to arguments and discuss, but most just state their opinion and are done. At town meeting they represent their own personal views. Without competition for seats, there's no real way to pressure a rep to give you a hearing, nor vote out someone you disagree with.
In practice, in order to have a say in town government you have to *be* a town meeting member. (People actually say this: "if you don't like it, run for town meeting".) Which is all well and good as long as you're free 2 evenings a week for a period lasting anywhere from 3 weeks to 2 months in May and June (not to mention possible special town meetings which can happen, I believe, at any time). In other words, as long as you 1) work traditional hours or don't work and 2) have no evening caring responsibilities. I don't think there are records kept of the demographics of our town meeting, but I strongly suspect they trend older, whiter, more conservative, and more male than the town as a whole.
So while I like the idea of town meeting, ours is a source of frustration to me.
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-28 04:24 pm (UTC)(I grew up in Winchester, next town over from Arlington, which is also representative, but my impression when I was growing up was that pretty much, if you wanted to be a Town Meeting member, it was pretty easy to do. And there, it's two meetings a year, spring and fall, which is a lot more manageable schedule-wise, I'd suspect.)
Re: Growing the communities we yearn for
Date: 2013-07-25 04:29 pm (UTC)I think of the first as personal community (your friends / family / etc.) and the second as social ecosystem (the general norms and broad characteristics of the people in the place you live).
Having lived in several different places in the US, I have to say that there are distinct differences in social ecosystems even regionally and that these differences affected me. They also had a direct effect on the amount of effort necessary to build a solid personal community. And unlike your personal community, which you do control, the social ecosystem is largely outside of your control.
So what do you do about an incompatible social ecosystem? In the long term, you can work to change it, but from a personal standpoint, you have to move.
But where do you move? This is the tricky part because most advice is based on very practical items like access to jobs, cost of living, etc. Social compatibility is very personal and more difficult to research. If you never live anyplace but where you grew up, you may never know how different, different places can be.