For the love of a game. Exploring community in the unexpected.

When is comes to community-building, we all complain about so many of the same things.

“Community is so hard to find.”

“It’s just impossible to find my people.”

“How do we like really connect with people anymore?”

“If I invest in other people, how am I supposed to ALSO take care of everything I already have to?”

But yet, we still all collectively fail to find good answers. And those of us who fall into the big-hearted carers category are more spun out by this than most. Because everything feels so incredibly important right now and no one taught any of us how (or that it’s ok) to actually enjoy life, do beautiful things, and spend time doing things that are not intentionally therapeutic and are just actually fun (while still caring).

Does anyone remember fun?

I didn’t. Not until about six months ago. Fried by, well…everything. I downloaded what I thought was another mindless pew pew game to play my way through stress-induced insomnia on my phone while practicing zero good sleep hygiene and reading articles about how bad blue light is for rest.

What it turned out to be was this bizarre and expansive little ecosystem of social engineering wrapped in a cute little war game. Seriously, I have no doubt someone in a foreign country is studying this place. Six months in, I am apparently a willing bug in a jar. Grouped with a team of 100 people who I would absolutely never have a reason to meet in my normal spaces, we show up on time and prepared, from all over the world, at all hours, for completely unimportant nonsense just to show up for one another. We make each other laugh. We make terrible jokes at each other’s expense. We debate for stupid amounts of time about in-fighting drama that all seems terribly important at three in the morning.

And sometimes, a few people will just sit on a voice channel on Discord not talking much, but being together in the boredom and loneliness that has become modern life. Last night, I hung out with an older gentleman who has a traumatic brain injury so he can’t remember most things, but loves us and we love him. He’s had a very very hard life that most of us couldn’t comprehend. And he makes everyone laugh. Constantly. Then there was the 25-year-old single guy who is OBSESSED with the Shrek 2 soundtrack. Epic is his word for it. The third was a sweet dude who uses a rubber chicken for an avatar and decided I should be his chicken wife the first time we spoke - we’ve been keeping it up for months. They mumbled…I listened with my mic off since my family was asleep. The older gentleman kept typing everything he was saying out loud into the chat feed because he couldn’t quite work out that I could hear them even if they couldn’t hear me. At one point, they were all whisper-singing different wrong lyrics to Smash Mouth in unison.

It was sweet. And pointless. And it was fun. It was community. And it was the best part of a frankly terrible day yesterday.

I started playing this silly game to pass the time. I stayed first out of total fascination at the incredible engineering and marketing that went into a game that has made more than two billion dollars in three years.

But now I stay because the time invested has paid so many subtle and unexpected dividends.

It’s a place without politics. A silent rule everyone just seems to agree on. No world events. No news. No division. Bigotry and hate is never ever tolerated (and is exceedingly rare).

And it’s entirely self-organized. The game throws events at you and somehow dozens and dozens of alliances of 100 people each have to figure out how to work together toward complicated and poorly explained common goals.

Absolutely nothing about this space is ‘me’. I’m not naturally playful. Discussing zombie-killing strategies as seriously as I usually discuss geopolitics feels pretty ridiculous. I’m not a gamer. Shooting stuff is not that exciting to me. And I’m mostly pretty judgy about stuff like this. I have no idea how or why I enjoy this as much as I do.

Generally, I lean high brow. Shocker, I know. Arms crossed and eyebrow raised is my resting stance.

“She’s so smart,” is my neutral setting. I’m not always happy about this, but smart people have to be self aware, so welcome to my paradox.

But I don’t have to be any of that there. There, among a bunch of people who would never really be ‘my people’ otherwise, I can laugh. Like really laugh.

For a long time, I struggled to reconcile this new version of myself with the rest of my I occupy space in this world.

But as I worked to plan my offers for this year, I realized that that’s exactly how I want to show up in my work and it’s how and what I want to teach.

That we can create spaces where people do not have to be the same. Where deep values matter. And where we collectively decide to take care of one another, come together, and respect all of what makes us human.

Spaces that offer more than meets the eye. More expansive and integral than what’s expected. More value than the price tag implies. More story than a sales page can contain.

It’s a lot harder than it sounds. Because basically the second we get a whiff of political leaning, the knives come out. And conceptually, doing so essentially flies in the face of most marketing and branding logic. How do you attract disparate people, convince them they’re safe, actually create safety for them, AND not completely dilute specificity in the problems you’re solving?

Good question.

Solid question.

Very strong question.

….... .... .... ..

Yeah, but not so easy to answer.

Mostly because there isn’t really an answer. There’s a challenge of intention and an upright commitment to it all just being really fucking hard until it isn’t.

And what’s interesting right now is more and more, I see deeply caring business owners and creatives (the ones who have been marginalized their whole lives) moving in the other direction. Especially those who occupy more fringe territory (queer, neurodiverse, etc…) are choosing overtly segmented spaces for their own health and safety. I get it. The way most modern spaces (carefully and intentionally not using the word communities here) function are not at all structured to hold divergence or support disparate emotional or professional capacity.

But they can be.

No, not everywhere. No, not every time. No, not in every circumstance.

But it IS possible when the discomfort is welcomed, understood, and woven into the structure and culture from the beginning. Real community is messy and filled with unexpected friction points.

But friction points are where growth happens. And it’s where new connections find one another.

Friction is where learning lives.

But only when we stop believing that the fractured culture we’re in is beyond repair. Only when we stop trying.

This is what I aspire to make room for in every group I run. I want to welcome different. Different ages, backgrounds, goals, ideas, financial levels, experience levels, etc… Otherwise, how does anyone learn anything? The only baseline rule is that we show up open and ready to hear, and ready to guide, and ready to respect ourselves and others. And yes, I’m aware that will eliminate quite a few people. This isn’t some utopian wonderland. But if someone wants to learn, I want to teach and expect the same from those who join me.

​It’s the sort of space Bread & Butter is​. Simple, delicious, kind. Inviting of different, divergent, ordinary, and extraordinary. We begin next week. ​You should come.​