Tag: XOXO

Thanks for All the Fish

Communities are hard. This is true whether you’re talking about in-person communities or online communities, but for right now I’m mostly talking about online communities. They’re hard to set up and cultivate, they’re hard to maintain and manage. The mechanics of an online community isn’t really the hard part, though there’s certainly some technical expertise to get them set up properly. What makes them hard is that a community is inherently made of people. There may be some sort of cohesive glue that brings folks together, to start to bond and connect and create that sense of community, but it’s still a jumbled pile of different individuals with individual needs, desires, personalities, and challenges. Even assuming you manage to get everyone moving in one rough direction and start cultivating community, keeping them moving in the same direction and keeping that cohesion… well. There’s a reason so many communities fizzle out before too long (or worse, explode from internal drama).

I think we’ve all experienced it to one degree or another. So, when you finally find a community that you like, and that seems healthy, you appreciate it. I really, really appreciated the XOXO community.

Continue reading “Thanks for All the Fish”

Oops, missed September

Current status:

  • ~500 unreads in my RSS feed (and that’s after some aggressive scanning and running through some of the higher-volume-but-lighter-weight stuff).
  • ~100 open tabs of stuff to either finish reading, share, or process in some way.
  • Inbox is read but I’ve got a handful of messages to still respond to (apologies if you’re waiting).
    • Been terrible at keeping in touch in general, so you could apply that statement to various messaging services as well.
  • Completely missed posting anything in September, despite plenty of desire and even some thoughts to share.

Lots of excuses: I flew out to a conference at the end of August, but promptly got sick the first day of the event and missed it; we bought a house and that’s been a steady supply of tasks; the work project I spent the last 10+ months on finally released and the month leading up to launch was kinda crunch-y; we adopted another dog and have been getting her acclimated… the list goes on. After the flurry of stuff the past two or three months plus the year of traveling, it feels like I haven’t had a chance to catch my breath in a while and I’m fucking tired.

Some quick thoughts:

  • I’ve been pondering looking at other blogging options, possibly rolling something up with a platform like Astro or similar. It’s no diss on WordPress, but it doesn’t hurt to experiment. It might give a nice opportunity to try out different layouts and patterns and ways of approaching the site beyond the traditional “blog” experience (maybe start thinking more of the garden concept). I’ve got a few underutilized domains sitting around, so I’ll probably experiment there rather than muck with this blog directly (for now). My actual blogging/writing needs are pretty simple: a spot where I can write without it feeling like a chore; working RSS feed support; maybe some improved media handling. Everything else is gravy.
  • One of my favorite online communities (the Slack associated with the XOXO festival) is going read-only soon, as the conference has officially run its course, and there’s sort of a scramble within the community to find a solution folks can migrate to. As I mentioned before, I don’t have a particular desire to run a forum or online space again, but the conversation has still piqued my interest and left me curious about what the options are these days, especially if you want something open source.
    • A few I’ve noticed while looking around is setting up an XMPP server, or a Matrix server, or a Rocket.Chat server, or a Mattermost server, or a Discourse server.
    • They all seem like kind of a pain in the ass in different ways. I think the ones I’d be most interested in experimenting with personally would be either Matrix or Discourse (and yes, I know Matrix is technically a protocol, but I don’t really care whether it’s Synapse or Conduit or whatever). I think it’s kind of neat that Discourse is primarily forum software, but they’ve implemented what looks like a fairly robust chat system on top of it, so you get a hybrid chat+forum experience.
  • Thinking about my relationship with information in general, and how to better organize both what I write and what I read and want to save. Sort of a perennial topic if I’m honest, but I’m getting that itch again. This blog is still too high friction to be a scratch notebook, but as a step past that it might still fill a purpose. Pondering giving a genuine go at using Obsidian for that lower level scratch role.

Tired, a little fried from the pace of things lately, but hopeful that this fall and winter will strike a better balance. Hope you’re all doing alright as well, and that this fall turns out to be slow in all the best ways.

Post-Event Survival Guide

So, you just attended an event that was revelatory and cathartic and emotional, and now you’re a jumbled up pile of feelings and thoughts and have no idea where to even begin. You had these amazing experiences and conversations and you’re feeling excited and drained all at the same time. What do you do? Here’s some gentle suggestions:

  1. Give yourself time. (But not too much time.) There’s a lot your subconscious is still figuring out, and it’s okay to give yourself the time, space, and permission to let things process. That said, if you take too much time, the mental thread gets lost, and the energy wanes. Give yourself a week to regain your bearings.
  2. Actively process. Meditate, journal, discuss with a trusted friend. Think about what about the experience felt revelatory and energizing, and what you can do to extend and act on that feeling. Give your subconscious a leg up by being active about how you process it all.
  3. Keep in touch. You met amazing people and had amazing conversations. Keep those conversations going. Reach out. It takes effort to keep communication going (especially when shifting mediums like from in person at an event to online), but this is how you form community, and how you’ll keep that energy for your New Idea™.
  4. Write down your ideas. Your mind is running a mile a minute right now, and there’s all the people to talk to and all the things to do, and so many new ideas and new projects. That’s great! Write it all down while it’s fresh. A lot of the bigger ideas are going to take more time and energy than this hyperactive sugar-rush of feelings will sustain, so write it down. Process your feelings, then come back to the idea when you’re able to sit down and think about how to actually get from Point A to Point B.
  5. Cherish the moment. Even if you go to the same event again, you won’t necessarily have that same energizing experience, and even if you do, these sorts of events tend to be only once or twice a year. So savor it while you’re in it, and try to remember that feeling six months down the line, when you’re feeling stymied or blocked. (Keeping in touch with others helps remember this feeling, too!)
  6. Forgive yourself. At the end of the day, when the event is all over, it’s easy to feel like you could be doing more or should have done more, or have your impostor syndrome come back and double down. (And, worse, when the event rolls around again next year, you can find yourself discounting the work you’ve done, and thinking about all the things you wanted to do after the last time.) It’s okay. You had the experience you had, and it’s going to be a different experience than anyone else had. Some people maybe even had a similar experience, but come off more eloquently when they talk about it, and you feel like you should have had something more. But they’re not you, and while it can be useful to think about things you’d like to do differently, don’t dwell on it.

These are things I’ve found useful to remind myself when in these sorts of experiences. I hope it helps.