Faded Jeans Living

I created two meetup.com groups!

“Meetup is a platform for finding and building local communities. People use Meetup to meet new people, learn new things, find support, get out of their comfort zones, and pursue their passions, together.”

This was a long time coming. I had wanted to do this for a couple years, but just never felt comfortable enough to make it happen. After connecting with such awesome superheroes out here, I started craving for face to face interactions. Just like when I started my blog, I don’t have many folks who actually show up for events, 5 right now, but I’m more then fine with it. I’m better in small groups and that’s 5 more people I can connect to in my circle. I hold one slow walk a week and one fast walk.

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The ruck meetup meets my desire to go get my ass kicked! And I love being with those types of folks who can relate with me. So far I have two other folks that have been showing up consistently for it. We actually have one today. 4 miles and it just snowed.

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So it’s been a trip stepping out of the online community to my neighborhood community. Each person is so unique and a joy to meet. Just like me they were nervous to show up originally, but after meeting and chatting it up as we ramble down the road we are all smiling when we’re done. I custom built in a slow walk Tuesdays for a couple in their 70s. The wife came the first couple times then got her husband to join. He has a cane and his doc told him this is good for him. It’s a very slow walk, but we get a lot out of it. I love hearing their life stories and also just getting outdoors and connecting with them. Another person who joined actually lives about 6 houses down from my house! It’s a trip.

I use Facebook groups and Nextdoor to advertise the events and that has proven to work well. Originally I built a WordPress site for the walking group, but ended up scrapping that to just use Meetup.com. It seemed more like the right tool for the job and it already has a group of followers who use it to search for local events.

I’m learning a lot and each event I hold I’m getting more comfortable being out of my zone. Just like I’ve learned out here on WP, we actually have a lot more in common then the f’n news tries to depict. To be honest I feel like this type of connecting is what it’s going to take to bring us closer together. The Metaverse scares the hell out of me, and I feel like it’s just going to divide people even more.

Anyway, that’s what I did and I’m sure you’ll hear more about it in future posts. Gotta get some breakfast in me before my ruck!

Peace,

Dwight🦋