Year 28: In Search of Community

[oboegoddess]

I'm 28 now. Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday on Facebook, Livejournal, in person, etc. I had a small and lovely gathering of people over on Saturday to do a "Host a Mystery" game, which was lots of fun. I was kind of disappointed that a couple of people didn't show up, but we made it work and I really enjoyed spending time with the

Comments

[prosewitch]

Happy belated birthday!

My thoughts on community are also kinda complicated; like you, I'm an introvert, so I need a lot of alone-time, but I also crave socializing sometimes. I've only had a few close groups of friends in my adult life, and they've all shifted or broken apart over time, due to people moving, drifting, etc. It's not something I really have in my life currently--there are a handful of people I'm really close with, but it's not a group structure so much as a me-and-personA, me-and-personB, and so on.

Grad school might help, but then, it might not. Some cohorts end up really bonding, some don't. And depending on how long you're in school for, the alienation factor tends to increase as you do less coursework and more research-alone time. That's been my experience, at least.

I don't know that I have very many suggestions (see above: I only intermittently get lucky enough to have community in my life), but I guess just keep an eye out for opportunities to interact with like-minded people?

[akashiver]

Happy belated birthday from me, too!

I'm going to second what prosewitch said. It's normal for communities to disintegrate/move on, and there'll be times in your life where you don't have a "friend circle" per se.

That said, I hope grad school provides that for you. (It should!)

[baristababe]

Eep. I missed your birthday. I'm sorry! Happy belated. :)

Ugh . . . I feel like this becomes harder with every passing year. I have a small group of close friends, but they are mostly dispersed throughout the country. For a time, I felt like I had one here, in graduate school, but people eventually move on and graduate. I feel like with every year, more friends become married, more friends become parents, they disperse a little bit more . . .

And like you said, no one ever taught us how to deal with this in our late 20s. If not married and focused on that sort of family building, then what?

I have a good friend back east who has an amazing chosen family (or urban family, as he names it). But, part of that - I think - is from living in proximity to where he has been, or grew up, most of his life. Several of the members of his community he's known for 20 years. If you move around . . . that becomes impossible.

As you can see, I've been thinking about it but, sadly, have no resolution.

[baristababe]

All of which is to say, I want it, but I don't currently have it. Like prosewitch, I have more of a me-with-A, me-with-B collection of friends. And I'm also an introvert. (Cursed to be an introvert, perhaps, since then people are surprised when I crave socializing.)

[niyabinghi]

Happy belated birthday!

Hmm... for the past 12 years or so my chosen community has been mostly online.
As a single parent, I didn't quite fit in with my friends with kids who were married or partnered.
I have some good neighbors who've turned into fairly good friends, but other than that, no, just individual friends here and there.

[akitrom]

By the way, 28 is a perfect number.

The perfect numbers are the sums of their proper divisors. 6 is a perfect number. 1, 2, and 3 all divide evenly into 6, and 1+2+3 equals 6. 1, 2, 4, 7, and 14 all divide evenly into 28, and 1+2+4+7+14 equals 28.

You won't be perfect again until you're 496, so live it up.

But, hey, next year, you'll be prime!

[sedeara]

I've had similar struggles -- I've often lived apart from my closest friends and family, and I spent most of my adult live single, so I was constantly searching and yearning for community. And I *did* live in a cooperative! It was an artist cooperative where we were required to do service hours and serve on committees, all of which should have fostered community -- but even then, my introversion made it hard for me to reach out

[oboegoddess]

Yeah, I feel similarly about wishing I had a community to call my own. I actually find it harder when I'm in a relationship to find community than when I'm single in some ways. When I'm single, I have to reach out to other people if I want company at all, whereas when I'm in a relationship, it gets too easy to just be with my partner and depend on them for all of my social needs. I do not want to become someone who has no life or friends outside of my partner!