For months feelings of being overwhelmed have been building up in me. I have too many projects in progress and, consequently, I am neglecting some of them. And ideas for new projects continue to pop into my mind. There are too many articles I want to read, too many videos I want to watch, too many podcasts I want to listen to and too many books I want to read. What is alive for me now? TOO MUCH!
I need to, and want to, focus, focus, focus.
As I reflect on my first year as a member of Emergent Commons, all things considered, it has been a very good experience. But, as with the rest of my life, EC offers too many opportunities for the time I have available. Therefore, I will try to concentrate my energy on my personal priorities within this online community. For me personally, EC is a means to an end, a good container useful for working towards a greater purpose.
After discovering Game B three years ago, I had a strong desire to be part of the movement that was beginning to emerge. Almost immediately, I wanted to be part of a community that was part of that movement. After considerable searching and several false starts, I was introduced to Emergent Commons. In hindsight, I probably projected my own desires onto EC as a whole from the start. Recent conflict has helped me gain better perspective, I think.
It is now my intention to launch a new Crew at Emergent Commons, NOT GAME A. I will explain this more fully in a separate post. If this idea gains sufficient traction as I hope it will, this Crew will probably become the primary focus for my EC engagement.
A few months ago I volunteered for the Member Engagement Team which has proven to be a good move. I am comfortable with the activities of this Team and with the ten other members of this Crew. This will be an area of engagement for me for the foreseeable future. Focusing on new members has already yielded unexpected dividends. There are now three new members of EC who live in Guadalajara, driving distance from where I live, who I hope to meet in person.
There is an area of EC which seems important to me but underutilized, the Building This Community Crew, Building our Structure, Cohering our Field. My intuition is that EC is an important piece of a much bigger puzzle. The Movement will need many communities and EC seems to have something unique that is not yet well defined. And there is work to do around tensions as we seek coherence. It is my intention to be more engaged with this Crew and, hopefully, spur more activity.
In addition to building a Movement, I am also interested in building meaningful connections with other people. In this regard, my first year at EC exceeded my expectations. Currently I am following 22 members, most of whom I already have a meaningful connection with plus others that I would like to get to know better.
I will try to stay connected to EC as a whole by reading the weekly Newsletter and following some of the links. I will regularly look at Events. And once in a while, as time permits, I will switch my Personal Feed to Everything and browse.
For now, I have left some Crews and I now only follow Topic areas 6 and 7. My intent is to be both engaged and focused. And my new engagement plan will be my servant not my master so I will modify it whenever I deem doing so necessary.
I will try, and probably occasionally fail, to resist discussions about Game A. I often find such discussions very interesting, but unproductive. And I will practice, practice, practice holding my opinions on Game A matters lightly.
Finally, I invite all EC members to share their engagement plans. Why are you here? Those are discussions worth having.