Talking about community with other people is a funny thing. It isn’t quite like talking about friends or romance. It also isn’t like talking about work, where expectations are always contextualized within obligation and livelihood or, in the best cases, guided by ambition. Hobby talk isn’t exactly it either, because that is a language of pleasure or leisure or personal development.
Talking about building things with other people – its joys, its annoyances, its problems that feel borderline unsolvable – is a lost dialect for many of us. In my experience, we sort of mash up the other languages listed so far in a way that never really scratches the itch.
Like, my frustrations with a volunteer project aren’t exactly because I don’t get along with people as friends, and it’s also not because I feel obligated to it like work, and it also feels higher stakes than a hobby. It’s some fourth dimensional thing!
It’s also an issue of hopes and dreams; if our expectations of what it will feel like to show up to the town meeting or organize a block party are that it will be Sesame Street level smooth, anything less than this might bring us shame, sadness, and utter disappointment.
So what happens when we’re elbowing through all this, when nobody else seems to know what we’re going through, or when someone attempts but it’s a hot-and-cold take like “just dump him” but the “him” in this case could be a whole damn working group?
We feel lonely in it! We’re more likely to feel like it’s a waste of time. We also don’t get to develop the layered, capacious language we both wish we could bask in and could offer to others.
I believe we need new forms of support that name this gap and offer a hand. I want to develop a language around building things with other people that is practiced as intentionally and offered as freely as a language group at the library.
Maybe it’s time to call 1-800-PEOPLEPROBLEMS as a start?
1-800-PEOPLEPROBLEMS is your free, friendly hotline dedicated to all problems of the peopley variety.
Got conflict within your club? Woes in the working group? Newbie nerves? Or maybe you just want to gut check your next get-together! Cook up a new thing with your neighbors! Whatever!
It doesn’t even have to be a problem. We just love alliteration. If it has anything to do with you and building things with other people and you could use some space to talk about it, you know who to dial.
How to hotline
Leave a message on the hotline here – voice memos are encouraged, but written is also fine. All identifying details will be kept confidential to the hotline exchange but you're welcome to anonymize, make up names, or keep it vague if that feels more comfortable. You should receive a response within a week – an invitation to a call, a voice memo, or written response based on your preference/my availability – but this may take longer depending on volume or not happen at all if I'm not comfortable responding.
About your hotline host + what to expect
This is a peer-to-peer hotline experiment, meaning that I am here to offer time, attention, belief in you, and maybe new ways of thinking, inspiration, or an idea. This is not an expert advice zone. We might not crack the problem together. I am not a therapist or coach but someone who swims in these questions every day in my collaborations and writing. This is an experiment in giving love and attention to the kind of talk that doesn’t often get this.
It is free but the only expectation is
that you pass it on, in a pay it forward kind of way, to someone else who needs to talk about the struggle/joy/annoyances of building things with other people
This is just one attempt at creating a Sacred Venting Space, which I’ve explored before as something characterized by its possibilitarian posture. These conversational spaces are a rung or two more elevated than gossip but still embrace the real talk. Spaces like this hopefully:
Help us articulate and understand our emotions about community work and the nuance within them
Move us towards endurance; possibility of empathy, understanding, changes to be made that make it easier to stay in space together
Build shared pictures of what happened with people you trust, fill in the gaps and add gradience to our assumptions
Teach us something too; help us recognize our own patterns of response and feeling and challenge us to grow in ways that excite us
How might we all build language for the conversations about community that don’t have space but really need it? A language big enough to embrace the messiness, contradictions, letdowns, wins?
Maybe one answer, for now: a lot of practice!
or simply click that ₊˚.⋆⁺₊💜₊˚.⋆⁺₊ at the top if you indeed liked it, we always appreciate that here at group hug hq!! love to you all
p.s. If you’re new here, might i show you the way to GROUP HUG HQ?
GENIUS. I love this idea. Can I help?
Uhhh this is very, very cool?!!?!?? Also this jot form is very pretty lol