In the meantime, the women over at Single Women Rule started a Meetup group which prompted me to start doing some brainstorming for my own version. But I still couldn't get anywhere. It seemed like a lot of work for something I wasn't sure I wanted.
I mean, I want a warm community of singles in my life but I am not sure I want to be the leader of it. I've led a meetup group before and it takes a while to get it off the ground during which time there may be one other person attending your "Satisfied Singles Potluck". Meetup is a people potluck after all. This can be a blessing, especially creating community, but I'm just not sure that I want to put a whole lot of effort into spearheading it.
And I might not be able to put a lot of effort into it anyways. I'm going back to work full time (I've been underemployed and working as a homemaker/landlord/lost dog mother/actor this whole time). I've actually started a short-term blog chronicling my days until I attain full time employment-- it might be very boring to read but it provides me with some accountability for my goals which is nice. If you're also looking for work, please read and comment!
Going back to work full time (in addition to Bosslady and keeping up with my beloved projects) severely limits the amount of time I can commit to new projects.
But today I realized that all my reluctance was irrelevant because I no longer feel the desperate need for a singles community: I have community with my roommates!
Until a few weeks ago, this wasn't really the case. I rent out rooms in my house and I love everyone who lives here but we mainly just interacted in passing. We didn't hang out much together and we never really did things outside of the house together. We all had good, yet minimal, relationships with each other.
Then a couple things happened:
I decided to plant a food garden (inspired by approximately 7 garbage bags of mulch given to me by Bosslady's husband). One of my roommates works at a garden store. I knew I was in over my head so I invited her to help. Another roommate had grown a rooftop garden while she was growing up and knew how to plant ginger and onions and garlic from scratch. And the other roommate had some general gardening knowledge and helped me pick out tomatos. Little by little the garden grows. Today we picked the first fruit from the garden: one red strawberry. I sliced it into four dainty slices. Three of us ate our slices promptly (it was tart but good) and I wrapped up the final remaining slice for the absent roommate. It was so small that we all laughed when I set it on top of her food in the fridge.
One of my roommates decided to foster a dog through the rescue organization that I've worked with for three years. With a new puppy in the house, everyone was enchanted and everyone pitched in. The puppy chewed shoes and raced around and snuggled and melted everyone's heart. So when I went out of town everyone offered to care for my dog who they'd also gotten to know better. One of my roommates told me today that she has been walking my dog and she hoped that was OK with me. Ahh. The secret life of dog!
Of the four of us who live here, two are single and two have boyfriends. But we're all pretty independent women.
Tonight (on the almost 1 year anniversary of my downward spiral in regards to fitness/diet and overall health), I went to the gym! I haven't intentionally exercised in, well, a year. I went with one of my roommates and we'll continue to motivate each other into the indefinite future.
Now I have plenty of community in my life. And it all started with some plants and a puppy. It turns out that I wasn't craving singles community as much as I was craving people to take delight in life with, to do projects with and to share laughter and stories with. Turns out they had been here all along, I just never thought to ask!
