Finding Community

I've had severe writer's block for almost seven years. They say to overcome writer's block that you should write, even if it is to write about writer's block or mundane topics. I managed to write something for two days in a row but today I have that block again. I can feel anxiety building up as I write this. I don't even want to publish this post but I am going to force myself just to hold myself accountable since I have recently enlisted the help of an accountability partner. I'd like to get to the point where I blog at least once a week but our goal is to blog every single day until my vacation is over, no matter how mundane or unpolished the topic.

Lately I have been feeling depressed because I don't have a writing community. But I lost my writing community because I stopped writing. I used to love signing on to the blogs that I followed at least twice a week and reading my favorite blogs. However, it's been so long that I have lost that community and they have all stopped blogging. I found a few of the former bloggers on twitter and instagram but it seems like they are just having one way conversations with people lately and all of the rich discussion that I used to crave is gone.

I signed up for twitter back in 2004 and at the time it was a place to have rich, intellectual or personal dialogues. Although I used a pen name, I felt like I was the most authentic that I have ever been. I wrote on a number of blogs. I had a personal blog, a feminist blog, a political blog, a few education blogs, a book blog and a health blog. They were all highly read blogs. I felt like people got me and connected me with me. In the comments section of the blogs we would have rich discussions. People who left comments would link their blog, making the community larger. Bloggers would link their favorite blogs on their sidebars so that many of us would be able to find other like minded bloggers. It was heaven and the most creatively stimulating time of my life. Then due to personal tragedies I just stopped blogging.

Lately I have been searching for blogs on google and I just can't seem to find the same sort of communities that used to thrive back in the day. Everything seems so whitewashed, so corporatized, so monetized. Sponsored posts here, sponsored posts there. Not that there is anything wrong with sponsored posts but there just seems to be an inauthentic overabundance of them nowadays in comparison to the past. There are few personal blogs that I have found online...yet. Or maybe I haven't been looking closely enough. Everything seems all about click bait and getting followers. Posts seem to be dumbed down. Everyone seems to have lost their attention span and lost their damn minds.

In the past twitter used to be a rich place to engage in quality discussions about deep topics. But sometime around 2013 people seemed to stop talking "with" one another and talking "at" people. People post cute pictures, cute quotes, retweet articles that they like and don't have much interaction with others anymore. So much content is coming at you so fast from media that it starts drowning out the people who we used to have discussions with. At one point I changed twitter accounts (by the way, I created a new one here recently if you are on twitter) but now I am even frustrated there because I can't seem to break into any new communities or find any new connections. I am going to persist and hope for the best because twitter has always been my cherished platform.

People on Facebook are more interested in talking about cats or funny memes or looking at pictures of food than having any kind of intellectual conversation or interactive extended dialogue on a topic. And that's all right, I suppose, because every social media platform has it's own flair to it. It balances out my tendency to always want to overly engage in intellectual conversation all the time, constantly. But the nature of Facebook, with allowing longer posts that you can write in comments, could be particularly powerful for engaging in quality dialogue about deep topics. But the format of Facebook is strange and if you write a comment to someone's comment on a post, you often don't get a notification that someone has written back to you.  I often have to remember what I wrote on and scroll down to see if someone answered my question which is tiring and I don't want to do. Figure it out, Facebook, especially considering that the platform is supported to connect us. And, most of the time you can't even have a conversation any more with strangers because people are too busy telling you that you are fat or an idiot or insulting you in some other way instead of actually having an intellectual or logical debate or exchange of ideas.

I recently signed up for instagram. It's somewhat okay and thought that I could find similar minded people out there in the world. But the nature of instagram is also strange and it doesn't allow people to link to their own blog or website. "Go to my profile and click on the link" is a common occurrence, and then when you click on the link it goes to their commercial website. I find people who say they are bloggers only to find out that they are instagramers, which isn't blogging. Microblogging perhaps but I am in search of blogging. After a while I started to suspect that many of the people in instagram would follow me only to have me follow them and then unfollow me, which irritated me and made me feel used. I don't mind following people who don't follow me back but a common occurrence of people following you just to get their own followers is annoying and bad business. Many people on instagram are also fake profiles designed to sell things, have an overabundance of sponsored posts or actually steal content from others. But I will persist and try to find others who are similar to my interests. It does have a good yoga community there.

My mama always did say that I think too much and that curiosity would kill the cat and that it would one day be my downfall. I feel like I am going out of my mind with not being able to engage in extended conversations about deep issues. I want to talk religion, politics, feminism, history, literature, race and racism, multilingualism, health. I want to examine assumptions and beliefs. I want to get to know other people on a deeper level rather than a superficial picture or meme level. I get that we all need the superficial and fun thing here and there but I also crave balance. As I write this it just occurred to me that I used to do it pre social media so maybe I just need to seek out face to face connections again instead of looking for likeminded people online. But it's just that so many people in my "real life" don't have many of the same interests as I do. My daddy always did say that I am a fish out of water and should move to a more artsy city so maybe since I am having a mid life crisis I should make that jump one day. Or last night it occurred to me that perhaps I should join an adult speech, debate or writing club.

In the past I blogged anonymously or with a pen name because I didn't want any personal attacks. But it became inauthentic. All my life I have silenced myself because people have told me that my ideas are too radical, too unrealistic, too stupid,  too this or too that. I've muted and hidden who I am from the world. And frankly I am tired of it and don't want to do it anymore. But it comes at a cost. Showing the real you in real life can alienate people. It makes you raw and vulnerable. It can cause people to have fodder to attack you. Any time I write a political comment on Facebook, I am told how fat and ugly I am and I have been threatened to be be reported to my boss (haha, as if my work can tell me what to do or say on MY OWN TIME AS MY OWN PRIVATE CITIZEN!!). It's stopped bothering me so much but it makes me wonder how emotionally healthy it is long term and how much of it gets into my subconscious. Showing yourself can offend or scare people. It can isolate you. It plays with your mind. But, day by day, there seems to be something free and liberating about it.

They say blogging is dead. They say people have short attention spans and don't want to read anymore. They say that it's a fruitless effort to try to engage in dialogue in this toxic climate in which we live. But they also say that when you lead with your authentic heart, show your authentic self and do authentically what you want to do that it will eventually all fall into place, that the world will open up to you and that you will find a new community. I will be persistent and hope that it's true. Sooner or later I am sure that if I am consistent enough that I will find my people.