It doesn't have to last forever to be worth doing

Beginning with other people + an EVENT in the new year!?!

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On the road to building anything with other people, there are about 10,000 black holes for our best intentions to stumble into. One of the most famous holes is taking the long view and letting that alone dictate what we should do next.

Should I go to this meeting if I can’t commit to going every month?
Should I organize this event if it can’t happen again the same time next year?
Should I try and start a weekly friend dinner cadence even if I know there will be some Sundays where it just won’t work for me?

The instinct behind these questions is a good one; we want to build repetitive practices that are sustainable (is this within my capacity?), responsible (how is this impacting others?), and reliable (can this be counted on?). These principles are how we begin with integrity. But the mind, MY MIND AT LEAST, it’s sneaky! There are times I have applied these principles in earnest and many more times where I have 100% wielded them in a way that might appear thoughtful but is actually just hurling imaginary obstacles in front of my own feet, preventing me from beginning at all.

Is there a way to consider how we might make community practice sustainable, responsible, and reliable – and also start anyway, even if they are not three boxes that get perfectly checked every time?

Maybe it’s about:

• Approaching any new commitment as a true experiment (and being very clear about this to anyone counting on us.) Hyperoptimism > overcommitment > inevitable failure is a classic cycle for many of us, and it can reinforce this sense of impossibility when beginning. Why try at all if I biffed it that one time? If I’m just going to let everyone down? I’m wondering about what it would look like if every new practice were approached as a true experiment, an iterative journey meant to lock in our commitment for the long haul. Maybe we try many first meetings. We contribute to one working group and plan to swap to another next year. We keep it light, notice how it makes us feel, where we feel strong and where we’re learning, let every experience dictate what happens next. The other half of this is being clear about our intentions with anyone counting on us; it’s hard to build something durable if everyone is flitting onto the next thing every month. An antidote could be stating our intentions, giving long runways of transition time, building up resilient systems to make it easy for others to experiment, too.

• Beginning small and slow. What could the lower stakes beginnings look like? Rather than launching a huge monthly event, trying out smaller pop-ups, tablings, piggybacking on someone else’s gathering. Instead of overcommitting to a new practice like volunteering or organizing in perpetuity – only to get burnt out after going too hard and never re-evaluating your capacity – time-binding your participation; attending a new group for a month, volunteering every week for a season.

• Responsibly sunsetting or offboarding if, indeed, our thing does not last forever. Can’t keep up your food distro forever? Tired of hosting the monthly clothing swap? Want to move on from your volunteer role? There are other people and organizations waiting for us to pass the torch. It might not feel like it, but there are. This is why it is so crucial to map existing efforts and leaders before beginning (even if you are beginning a clothing swap and the existing thing is the thrift store). These are who we join into an ecosystem with. These are the fellow volunteers we’ll take time to pass on our tasks to, or organizations or collectives we’ll list on our defunct website as new sources to check out. It can’t be instantaneous, but it can be a responsible way to end – which might make us feel more able to begin.

We should still do it even if we’re not sure we can do it forever, because chances are we’ll just get so amped on the feeling of doing anything that this itself will become the motivation. Or inspire other sister efforts, spin-off projects, ripple effects of many new volunteers and groups and gatherings. Our beginnings become compost for something else – for ourselves, for others inspired by us.

After meeting with some friends the other night to talk about organizing a new event that we hope to repeat, I found myself grappling with this beginner’s fear. Is it worth doing if we can’t guarantee it will happen repeatedly, or ever again after the first one? I might have accidentally been asking this too loudly to the cosmos because I turned on WPKN to an interview with Adam Wilson of Sand River Community Farm who said: “Will the farm still be around in five years? I have no idea. Would it have been worth doing if it ended tomorrow? Absolutely.”

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GET INVOLVED BUTTON: COWORKING TIME TO BEGIN YOUR NEXT COMMUNITY PRACTICE

Friday, January 17th // 8-9am PT / 10-11am CT / 11-12pm ET

Have you had a local org’s volunteer page open for months on an ancient tab? Been meaning to reach out to a Highly Cool Person (HCP) who could be your future collaborator, friend, or volunteer buddy? Is that interest form open? That half-typed email? Your mouse hovering on the Get Involved button?

Begin the new year by getting your next community practice started. “Community practice” is word salad for: volunteering! hosting! organizing! participating! donating! Doing any of this with organizations, collectives, friends that you want to build something with.

Part accountability space, part coworking, all first steps.

This is devoted, self-directed (i.e. you already know what you want to do) time for:

• Filling out volunteer forms

• Identifying who you want to get involved with

• Learning about orgs and projects near you

• Writing emails to people you want to meet + collaborate with

• Developing your own project/gathering/collective

• Working on something for a group you already belong to

WHAT WILL IT BE LIKE?

We’ll take action on what we’ve been meaning to take action on – in silence – but together! The hour will start with arriving into the zoom room and sharing intentions in the chat. Everyone is welcome to continue using the chat for inspiration, blocks, and questions on their mind. But we’ll mainly be heads down, getting started. At the end, we’ll share what we got up to and folks are welcome to unmute and share if they’d like. There will not be a talk or teaching. The vibe is more: come use this dedicated space to do the thing you have been meaning to do. There is motivating, inspiring magic in working on the same things in silence with other people who are all committed to the same thing as you are, and that’s what we’ll tap into together!

💜