I did a few posts on community today (both Facebook and Instagram).
It has been sitting on my mind recently, but really got to me when I watched the TikTok @ actuallyautistictiktoks shared the other day. Watching the video and reading the comments made me realize I had grown really comfortable in my F&F community bubble. I see the progress being made. I see the shifts in thinking. This trend towards being more inclusive and accepting of bodies and minds that diverge from what has been tasked as being the majority perspectives of the community that we should all adhere to and follow. But my gosh when you step into some of these spaces on some of the platforms, it's as if the needle never moved.
Where is the sense of community? And then I realized, I don't think the community has a firm grasp of what community actually means.
That bothers me so much. And I am stumped on how to address that. Or even if I should. I could just continue to keep building my own little community little by little. Person by person. That's been working for me. I have been successful in avoiding spaces and people that offer nothing in the way of advocacy and progression and quite frankly, get on my damn nerves.
But in my avoidance, I have missed so much. And it is ugly. On all sides.
I am taking a social media break again. I did so around this time last year. It was super awesome. I am going to auto post. I will leave comments open but I won't respond to them. I have to maintain an online presence even in my absence. Bleh. But I have partnerships that require I be there. I have to promote my book. And I need to maintain a presence to ensure my social capital doesn't take too much of a hit. Double bleh. Way of the internet world, eh?
I am going to share more here my time off. I wrote some stuff to post here but I didn't actually like ANY of it. So it's back to the drawing board there. I will also be sharing more on Patreon, this is not a free space. It is a paid membership where I will focus more of the “teaching” things. It is donation based, starting a $1/month if you would like to join.
Talk to y'all really soon.