Community

The other day I wrote about how I love to run but I’ve never found it prevented/cured/fixed/handled/soothed my depression. I ran Monday morning and due to an escalating thought in my head I was depressed by the evening. I ran Tuesday morning too. 1c. Windy. Rainy. Just me on the prom. I enjoy being that guy people see and think I must be mad. I’m not. I’m trying to be a better person. But I still wasn’t cured after the run.

So I asked online. Some people suggested alternate forms of exercise. I already swim and I love to be the guy who after a mile is just warming up. So I do another mile. One day I’ll do a 5km in the pool. One day. But again it doesn’t cure/fix/resolve/sooth/help with my depression. Maybe it does for a bit while I’m doing the workout but that’s not sustainable. I can’t do a workout every few hours. So I don’t think alternate workouts are the key. If I’m already doing activity that elevates my heart rate, gets me outside and allows me to take in a beautiful morning sunrise but doesn’t cure depression then I’m not sure how anything else would.

Today I joined a running club. They’re callled the “New Brighton Beer Runners”. A small but local group. I went for a run with them and a beer after in my local. How do I feel? I feel fine. Cured? No. Just fine. I did something new so there’s that. I met new people. I talked to new people. I laughed with new people. I saw locals in the bar too. I felt part of not just one thing but many things. A running group. A local bar community. Maybe that’s all it is. I need to be part of a community.

You’d think that would be easy in this day and age. The internet is everywhere. At one point I could get Slack on my wrist with my Apple Watch. It’s so accessible but I’m finding that trying to be part of a community is harder now. The forums I used to be on aren’t quite the same. People move on. I moved on. Facebook Group’s aren’t a substitute for that. There’s no Twitter groups. Slack and Discord are not accessible in the way that IRC was.

/connect euroserv.fr.quakenet.org
/list (to see all the channels)
/join #StarTrek

I’m then talking with like minded people about Star Trek and there’s no social issues to get in the way. It used to be so easy. I used to be part of a Quake 3 clan and regularly played CTF and TDM league games. I could do all this from the comfort of my living room. I do miss it. Now days its much harder to be on the global community of social media. My sense of humour doesn’t quite work online. Could I be any more sarcastic? Even that sentence doesn’t have the same impact. I hope you got the Chandler from Friends vibe to it but if not you don’t get the stress on the “be”. You lose a lot with just text. Who I am is lost with just text. At least on social media where its mostly normal people not a small group of Star Trek geeks.

Maybe what I’m finding now is that the internet is just a service. A tool for Apple news, TV / music streaming and syncing my calendar with my wife. Maybe the connections I want can’t be found online. Maybe what I need is to try and be afk more. That’s Away From Keyboard. Maybe I need to be involved in community groups that are based in the real world around real things. It’s very hard for me but maybe this is what I need because I understand how complex it is to just talk to someone in the real world and the true value of that. I really valued today. The running group. The people in the pub. Is… is this what home is? Finding a place where everybody knows your name? Norm! No, autistic. Waka waka.