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I had such a good time at Converge South in Greensboro last weekend. Of course the conference itself was great. I learned a lot about community journalism and the role of blogs in news and community building, and met lots of new people at the same time. There's some cool stuff happening in North Carolina, believe me.
But the people were what really got me about the place. There was a moment, sitting outside at the attendee barbecue on Friday night, held at the gorgeous home of local blogger Dave Hoggard that I thought, "This is what it's like to feel at home in a place."
North Carolina is definitely somewhere I could move. My parents will retire there in a few years, and our family has vacationed in the Carolinas for 25 years. Every year when we go I truly feel at home in a way I probably can't adequately explain. Also, I'm hoping to eventually be in a place where the cost of living is much lower than DC, and where winter isn't quite so long.
But I haven't been ready to leave here yet - and the primary reason is my friends. When I came back to Maryland from Ohio in 1999, I left behind a great group of people. Most of us worked at the same big bookstore, several of us were expats from other places who'd inexplicably landed in Southwest Ohio, and it just flowed from there. There were writing groups, wine nights, baby showers, post-inventory breakfasts, tv-watching and just hanging out on front porches. And when I wavered in my decision to leave the state just days before my scheduled departure, three of the women took me out to lunch on an emergency mission that showed great love and sisterhood, and told me that I could surely stay there, that in fact they didn't want me to go at all, but only if I swore that I would not stay in the same relationship I was in, if I stuck around.
This kind of relationship is priceless, and so rare. It's taken me years to reconfigure after losing a group of friends like that, and although I can't say I've done it that successfully in the DC area, I've met some keepers and some angels - people who help to get me through my days, who eat and laugh and grieve with me. They're not a group like I used to have, but they're my group. To leave them all would be a feat, and to re-create, again - well, I'm just not sure I've got it in me.
Ethan Watters coined the term "urban tribe" in his book of the same name a few years back. This was his take on it.
“Urban tribes” describes the social networks of friends we create in cities. While tribes can include married couples, they’re usually composed of those who have delayed marriage into their late twenties, thirties and forties. For a time, these tribes can replace our families as our primary social support system. We have inner-connected relationships with people in our tribes, we create rituals with them. Sometimes these rituals are as simple as eating dinner every week at the same restaurant or taking a Memorial Day hiking trip, but these repeated activities result in a sense of group history. Because of this shared history, urban tribes can lose members over time and gain new ones and still feel like the same group.
BlogHer contributing editor Jen Lemen has written some some very cool posts about her urban family that keep me inspired about the concept - a slightly different take than Watters' that makes me more comfortable, because it doesn't focus on relationship status and puts more weight on community building.
Rox at Stellargirl is doing just that.
It's exciting to keep the energy flowing as we continue to come together for conversation, knowledge sharing, community planning, and good old fashioned fun times. I'm watching in wonder as friendships and relationships grow stronger and this network really starts to feel like my new urban family.
She met her group through Likemind, another "why didn't I think of that?" social networking site.
who: people like you
what: an opportunity to enjoy coffee and conversation
why: because drinking good coffee with likeminded people is fun
how: piers and noah thought it might be a good idea originally, and lots of other folks seemed to agree
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