There's this weird societal standoff happening where we're all aware we need more in-person human interaction, to rekindle human connection, and to build genuine friendships and healthy communities, but as soon as it leaves the realm of abstract thought we all collectively shrug our shoulders and go "I dunno, hope someone figures out how to do that."
And, man, this whole "I'll be in on the community as soon as it exists" mentality is just not how community works. I mean, it's blatantly not. I get it. We're all tired, we're in a low trust culture. People are messy and not always easy to get along with. Trust me, I get it. But at the same time we can't constantly be yearning for more and never acting in an attempt to make that change. Or I guess we can if we're actually content for there to never be any change.
Yeah, meeting up with your friends once a week is, sometimes, a bummer. Sometimes you want to just spend Friday evening doing nothing. You're exhausted, you've had a shit day, you don't have the energy to be personable. Do it anyway. Go be exhausted with company, and let your friend be exhausted in your company.
Make clubs, go on hikes, get into TTRPGs, go to the bar if you can afford it, have dinner parties, pick up board games, play Smash Bros on the couch.
I dunno man, I keep seeing posts and comments of unanimous consent that we're all very lonely. Tons of people in one digital space all shouting for friends. Why not make friends with each other? Start a discord, start talking, share weird memes, play some video games, have discord movie nights. It's not the same but it's a start. Who knows where that can lead?
Anyway, just some thoughts. As the guy who's weirdly always the glue of the friend group, it can be tiring at times but it's usually worth it. Maybe the discord will die, maybe nobody will join. Close the server and try again. Maybe friend night will be pushed to every two weeks. Maybe once a month. Keep it going. Expand it. Be welcoming. Give it a try.
It IS possible to find community with people who also care about not getting or giving COVID to people, and it's very enriching to find them locally to you.
But it's a much smaller percentage of people which makes it very difficult and your options for community enriching experiences is severely limited because no one outside of your community is interested in COVID safety.
So. Respect to this post but all the reshares are really depressing me BC there are good comments and other good reshares about how COVID impacts this and people are not engaging with those comments/posts and it's popping my delusion bubble that all the queer ppl in my phone care about keeping each other safe 🫠 let me keep pretending y'all
Last year we got a bunch of artists in our neighborhood to get together and start a co-op art studio. It's a nonprofit with the goal of having a space to do art and we can all share the rent and costs associated with it, on a sliding scale. We wanted this to be inclusive and welcoming to everyone in the community.
One of the things we did was draw up a COVID safety plan. Masks, air filters, a protocol for contact-tracing if necessary, we're getting an air quality monitor as well. We built these things in from the start because we knew if we didn't prioritize them, it would get away from us and it would be harder to implement them (or budget for them) later on.
It turned into this third space in which people will drop in to hang out even if they don't have the time or wherewithal to do an art. I wouldn't call everyone who's a member a friend, I'm not that close to everyone. But they're part of my community. And who knows, if we keep spending time together, they may become friends as well.
It is possible. It's hard. Some people will self-select out of participating because the don't want to wear a mask or hang out with a bunch of queer commies and a singular cishet commie. That's good, you don't want to hang out with those people either.
We had some advantages not everyone does: we live in a big city in a walkable neighborhood. We found people that way. We found a dirt-cheap space that was falling apart and most of us were able-bodied enough to fix it up. We had enough people interested in joining that we could implement a sliding scale so more of us could afford to join. We had people that were okay paying more because they could afford it, so other people could pay less. So I'm not saying this is the blueprint for everyone and it's super easy and just do it.
I'm saying it's possible. It takes time (it took us most of a year to be up and running). It takes effort. Sometimes it takes money. But it will look different for your community. Maybe you don't want a COVID safer* art studio. (As it was pointed out in the comments, no in-person interaction is 100% safe from COVID. We can mitigate risk, but not eliminate it.)
Make a COVID safer book club and meet up at a public park. Make it even safer and meet over discord or zoom. Or make it a knitting club. Or volunteer to do something outdoors that's local to you (I help with natural area restoration, you can find something like that or a chapter of Food Not Bombs or something else entirely... My local FNB is COVID conscious and so is a local free store...in general I had better luck with anarchist-aligned organizations when it comes to COVID. Not all of them, but a larger percentage than most other "nonprofits." My local free store also needs volunteers for online stuff: logistics, planning, training, onboarding... And they have a slack group chat with channels to socialize, not just to organize labor. I think an online "movie club" emerged organically from socializing there and now there's a dedicated channel for it.
It's easier when you have a goal to get together with people that's not just "hanging out." It's also easier when you make sure as many other people as possible could keep the Thing running if you dropped off the face of the earth tomorrow. It's easier if you find who's already doing the thing. It's easier if you build COVID safety in from the start and not make a big deal of it. Most people (your local area may vary) will not object to wearing a mask if people are already wearing one and you offer them one right then and there.
