ON community, the real kind

This week, I’ve been thinking a lot about community— not the buzzword version, but the real, everyday kind.

The kind that happens when you sit at a coffee shop with your laptop.
When you take a figure drawing class.
When you’re chillin’ at a booth at the bar, or standing in the aisle of Home Depot staring at a wall of paint chips.

In my bright-eyed, bushy-tailed early 20s, I went on a mission to network.

And here’s something that sounds obvious, but we don’t like to say out loud:
Most networking spaces in our capitalist society aren’t about connecting— they’re about selling.

No one walks into a networking happy hour thinking about all the people they’re about to support. They walk in thinking about what they can get. Everyone’s there for themselves. And when you really sit with that, it begs the question— is a room full of self-interest the most valuable place for us to invest our time?

That was always my issue with “community” as I was led to experience it.

So many spaces felt predatory. Uncomfortable. Transactional. Like boys’ clubs, cults of personality, business advice disguising MLMs, and better than thou godly ring leaders.

So eventually — and especially when COVID made it socially preferable to retreat — I pulled back. I spent more time with me. I left the groups. I thought I was opting out of the idea of “community” altogether.

What I didn’t realize then was that I was just looking for it in the wrong places.

Life and success are subjective as hell, but one thing is consistently true: who you know matters. Not in a manipulative way— in a human way. In a proximity, familiarity, trust kind of way.

So if you’re trying to “network” your brand, your business, or your life, I’d invite you to stop forcing yourself into spaces that feel gross— and instead, meet people where they already are.

Join the figure drawing class.
Go to Thursday night bingo.
Join a book club, a kickboxing gym, a weekly group that meets up just to howl at the moon.

Talk about what you do— not to promote, but because you love it.
Be open. Be present. Let conversations happen naturally.

There’s something different about meeting people organically. Something easier. Truer. You don’t know who you’ll meet— and that’s kind of the key.

Community doesn’t have to be curated or strategic.

Sometimes it’s just about showing up as yourself and seeing who sits down next to you.

-Katie