Too Much Of A Good Thing

Well, it happened. Right in the middle of our "Community Month." I found myself with TOO MUCH Community. And I took my ball and went home. Sorry about that.

I am ten days away from marrying the absolute love of my life. I know she is because I've been down this path twice before and not only is the third time the charm, I've spent the past two decades in my journals and the past three years in therapy dissecting so much about me and how I love that I know that I know this time. Happiness doesn't begin to describe how I feel. I am absolutely at a loss for how I feel and it irks me because I so want to be able to describe it to someone. But like the foodie that says, "it just has that 'umami' flavor" as a cop-out, that's where I've found myself.

While experiencing umami joy and love, I've found myself unable to keep up with Community(s) - even ones like this that I have made. I've been missing friend's rooftop BBQs. I've been making appearances at events just to make sure the host knows that I am still alive. I was hosting an event and was the first to leave. I've been prepping my #NotSoSecretGarden for hosting but know that I am not going to be hosting anyone anytime soon. I've been checking in on friends but deflecting all follow-ups that involve "catching up."

Yes, I am in a very unique season of life. Yes, I am overly sensitive to my commitments to others. But I'll be damned if I am not overwhelmed by this moment of knowing how many different communities I'm giving my 100% all for.

Is there such a thing as too much of a good thing? Can you be overly invested in community and find yourself exposed like I feel? Is this a champagne problem and I need to just keep it to myself?

I believe that we are all made for Community and are prewired to try and find others we can plug in with. I believe that there is a certain amount of Community we all need to fill our tanks. But I also believe that there is only so much of ourselves that we have to give to others and that if we are overextended for some Communities, we are unable to fulfill our implicit commitment to other Communities.

The thing that I am thinking about tonight is how do we know when we are getting to the edge of our Community capacity? In our search to belong, do we spread ourselves too thin? Do we toss our name in the hat in so many Community raffles that we get diluted to even being able to know where to check to see if we're a winner?

There has never been more access to Community than there is now. There is every form of social media. There are countless renewed attempts at chat-rooms like Discord, Telegraph, or even Whatsapp that we are all being added to. Technology has never made it easy to be in touch with total strangers and to be so out of touch with what is actually happen in the lives of people we are connected to.

Should we think about our Community capacity in the same way that we think about other assets? That it is finite and that it has a limit to it before it becomes an underperforming asset class. It is something we can extend too far and get caught with our pants down when called on all the commitments we've made that we can't follow through on.

Thanks for being a part of this Community experiment and for rolling with the changing landscape of the world in real time with me.

I think Community might deserve another month as a focus point, so here's to June and being in deeper Community together wherever we've placed our bets.