So, for those of you wondering, I did have a good time at my class reunion. Here’s the handful of us who came (btw, we were in a hybrid space, but I had to sit outside because people couldn’t seem to keep the garage doors up to make it hybrid).
And of course, I introduced Les to one of my family’s all-time favorite seafood restaurants, Harbor Inn Seafood in Burlington.
And we stayed and ate at one of the most baller, yet green and air purified hotels in town, Proximity Hotel
We even had time to check out Reconsidered Goods, which has been hyped as one of the best craft thrift stores and in turn is one of the best thrift stores period.
And of course, we stopped by my mom’s so she could fill us full of cake, with a side of caution against eating too much of it. I’ve always loved calling North Carolina home, even if I don’t always feel welcome in it.
And of course, I thought it would be easy 9 years ago to just dump her and her wealth of community, calm, and yes, judgments and find all the relief in the promised land of DC. However, in these 9 years, with a brief stop in Kansas City, I’ve been troubled with a deficit of community.
When you see that I’m going to be on panels like on tomorrow (Thursday 7/10/2024) with the Othering & Belonging Institute. (PLEASE REGISTER AND WATCH!)
Or listen to the podcast
Or watch/listen to my many speeches and podcast interviews over the years
I don’t blame you for not understanding how I can still get so depressed that I write these kind of messages on my Twitter account (yes, I do support deadnaming this site)
Well, I think the key words are the DC urbanism space. I had this fantasy writing the early versions of this newsletter and blog posts in 2010 in my room at my mom’s house, at a tender millennial age of 25 that I would be able to write myself into not just proximity to Metro, but a thriving community full of all my favorite foods.
What I’ve realized over the past 14 years is that I can write. I can even craft. But I can’t control people.
Hence, my community starvation. Here’s more of what I mean, some of which I shared in the thread and some of which I’ve shared here for you.
Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about bills, but the months that I did I’m recovering from. Yes, I’m bitter that it’s come to me yet again having to leave the industry for employment, even though I adore my new job and the culture they’ve built and being able to use my muscles there.
And of course all the fiber art I do and I realize that in another life, where Metro was already at my front door, I would have been a master sewist and crocheter and editor in another space years ago.
But what hurts is the last two years happened and it left me financially and emotionally broken.
For clarity, this is a regional problem. My NC, GA, and other urbanists in southern and western states always come through. Baltimore, you’re exempt too.
But DC and a few select mentors, it’s a different story.
And others recommending me get into stuff that doesn’t end well or never ends well just for a check. Y’all should know me better by now. And just because this is always how its done doesn’t mean it’s going to work in this new normal.
And we need real honest community right now. And some of y’all are going to need me, when all these shitty schemes fall down and you need someone. But, I’m tired of only hearing from y’all when I’m palatable or when you’re in trouble.
Everyone else, thank you for still rocking with me. I’m working on getting the book, podcast, and newsletter up and running again for the fall. But I will need to hire and I will make that announcement when the money and the hire are set.
So here I am. In a world that’s becoming more repressive, I need the kind of community I can call at 3 am. When I was in the ER yesterday (for what we know is high blood pressure and possibly other things), I had all of my close folks on text, but I worried about the money I was losing taking off the afternoon. Yet, those folks were all reassuring me that everything would be ok.
I need more of that kind of community that doesn’t constantly remind me that I didn’t get here in time to enjoy the Obama years, struggle through my English Basement, and be able to cash out into a rowhouse anywhere in the legal boundaries of the District of Columbia. I need people who instead of scoffing at my car (and their own, think of all the people they leave behind when they argue over the semantics of what is public transit.
I need fish that tastes like its breaded with love, not dishwater. I need to feel all my feelings, unlike the person who told me without telling me when I was in a moment of crisis that I should join them in dissociation. I need my craft with a healthy dose of talking about our reality and not just putting it in a box of politics that might as well be making spooky ghost sounds like one of those fake Scooby Doo ghost villains.
So, this summer, on my newly ungentrified proverbial front porch, I’m searching for my real one.
Can you help me find it? And keep my blood pressure down and out of the ER too? Keep me from the kind of treatment June Jordan got in the architecture space?
Until next time,
Kristen