Community is Key
We all are feeling the effects of the pandemic.
The quarantine and isolation have taken their toll. If you’re still working from home, you’re likely missing your people, the network you’ve built over the years. Your community.
Early in 2020, I made a decision to be active on social media. Many of my friends consider me a conversationalist. My superpower is connecting with people and finding common ground.
If you ask my fiancé what my superpower is, she’ll tell you it’s my ability to find parking spots. I wish it were something different, but this comes in handy living in Brooklyn!
Writing online was new for me. I struggled to find my cadence. I was used to having two-way conversations with real people I can reach out to and touch.
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” – Kurt Vonnegut
At first, it felt like I was talking at my audience instead of conversing with them. Something felt off. I knew I had to make a change in my approach.
In hindsight, the change was simple. Talk about my passions. I love to cook, design, trade stocks, shoot with my camera, write stories, and listen to music. When I started to open up about my personal life, it resonated with complete strangers. There were others out there that shared common interests and a desire to converse about them.
These were the fibers I needed to tie in order to build a stronger bond with my audience. It came naturally. My big shift was to write as if I had an audience of one.
Something else I did was leave my posts off with a prompt or a question. When people responded, I would write back. Conversations were being had with complete strangers.
“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.” – Herman Melville
Online friends can turn into IRL (in real life) friends.
Over the last year, I’ve taken numerous online cohort-based courses. Write of Passage, Ship 30 for 30 and Part-Time Youtuber Academy are just a few of these community-building engines.
Your tribe is out there, eagerly waiting for you to find them. You just have to take the first step and start exploring.