I have a bit of social anxiety/shyness about 80% of the time, but then it flips into being very outspoken and this has affected how I interact with communities.
Some of my favorite community building was before quarantine working with one of the businesses in the economic development part of a local entity. You wouldn’t think working at a fiberoptic network company would let you ride in a limo to another sister store’s grand opening, or to be the voice recording to other sister companies, but opportunities are always there – like side-quests on a video game if you let them come in naturally, and most importantly, know your worth with it, too.
My least favorite community building was in high school, I helped my school for over 2 years including after I graduated, to facilitate meetings to win grants from the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation; A technology grant and a connecting-schools-to-communities grant.
The second grant was taken over by people who shouldn’t have been in charge of it and they turned the school’s shellfish club into a minor-ran business and had to pay Gates some of it back because of labor laws when in reality we had wanted the grant to save the autoshop, woodshop, and other technical departments at Quilcene school.
My dream community building would be every town have at least one place similar to The Boiler Room, a non-profit teen center coffee shop that was drug and alcohol free, open to all ages. It held art installations and small concerts, meetings, soup kitchens, and lots of other events. Since the pandemic, now more than ever, our peninsula communities need things like this to be places of peace for anyone who has aged out of the boys & girls club.
Meeting a singer named Kimya Dawson there when I was about 15 changed my life. She’s famous from the songs on the Juno soundtrack as well as a band called The Moldy Peaches and I met her lyrics right when I needed to as a teen. Music needs to be in communities again.