Let's have a salon

[jenett]

Several years ago, I ran a series of weekly salon posts, where I'd post a topic to get us started, people would show up in the comments, and conversation would ensue. Now seems a good time to try them again!

(You should not feel restrained to keep on this topic! Start other topics! Encourage topic drift! That's part of the point. Feel free to ask random questions, there's a chance someone might know about the thing.)

This week's question

What are you learning right now that you're really interested by? (That might be a project for work, for personal stuff, a gaming geekery thing, a book you're reading, a podcast you're listening to, the fact you're learning a lot about Dreamwidth and how it works this week, or anything else.)

What do you like about it? What are you finding more challenging?

Things currently contemplating

I'm currently reading Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones, which is well-researched and has a really interesting structure where he's looking at different pieces of it through small slices (individual people, towns, situations) and tracing back to the origins as much as possible. I really like books where the information part is well done, but the structure creates connections between pieces of information in helpful and new ways.

Notes:

* Consider this a conversation in my living room, only with a lot more seating. I reserve the right to redirect, screen, and otherwise moderate stuff, but would vastly prefer not to have to.
* If this works this week, I'll do an updated FAQ and continue.
* If you don't have a DW account or want to post anonymously, please include a name we can call you in this particular post. (You can say AnonymousOne or your favourite colour or whatever. Just something to help keep conversations clear.)
* If you've got a question or concern, feel free to PM me.

Comments

Re: Socializing when you're not a partier

[anandrine]

hmm, i think there's a bunch of factors to this. where you live, plus whether you've lived there a while or you're new. when i was in high school and college, even though i was in the conservative, religious south, this wasn't a problem. at one point, i met a couple friends through a church group, even though most of us weren't religious (or rather were interested in wicca, lol) and were gay/bi/etc--it was just kind of a convenient place to meet once a week. when i was in college, i signed up for student groups and met people there, and i occasionally went to parties with friends and met people there, but also, at that time i didn't drink and didn't feel out of place for not doing so. one of my most memorable experiences from that time was going to a spot in the middle of some alabama woods that supposedly had an abandoned, haunted church--totally sober.)

on the other hand, moving as an adult to a new state, i've definitely experienced the struggle. however, i also think it's less to do with "partiers vs. jesus freaks" and more to do with the fact that when that happens, you often have zero foundation to build on, unless you happen to have friends in the new state who can introduce you to their friends. in that case i feel it's not so much you only have two extremes when it comes to actual people, but when it comes to thinking of places where there are large amounts of new people you could meet, if that makes sense?