Reconnecting Locally

I am getting back into the swing of things this morning. I have finally had a normal night of sleep and back into Montana time. I woke up this morning thinking about how I have been half way around the world and connected to so many other artists and people in other cultures, but have I neglected those that already surround me here in my home region? I used to be very involved in my own community and knew everyone. Now it feels like I know very few people, as my circle of friends seemed to have grown smaller. Is it because it is so easy now to interact on the Internet that we can associate with others so far away and yet not interact with those around the corner? It is the human interaction that I so crave and somehow seem to miss. Part of the problem being in and/or from Montana is that most of us long to escape it. Many of us born and raised here have a yearning to live a life beyond the confines of our little mountainous area. Most people seem to complain that the dating pool is one of the reasons for leaving and thus it makes Missoula and Montana a very transient place to be. Once I have begun to cultivate a friendship and get to know someone well, it seems they are gone, never to return. I miss this and I particularly miss them. I have mostly only dated people from Montana and have always found most of the people and relationships I have had here extremely healthy and fulfilling. There tends to be an honesty here that takes a long time to cultivate then in larger population. I have lived in several large cities and my experience there was that people where mostly wanting something from you instead of seeing you for who you really where. I began to distrust others, whereas I never quite felt that back in Montana. It is true the creative people have no market here and resources to be creative sometimes have to be as creative to survive. It used to be this was a cheap place, and rent was always next to nothing so it didn’t take much to actually get by and you could mostly live by the seat of your pants if you needed to. But now the housing market has gone so high, I suspect mostly due to property taxes, that it’s becoming comparable to small cities and without the job market, it makes staying here even less appealing. Yet there is still a body of us that still remain and linger. The other day I was the University Bookstore in the art department looking for some supplies when I ran into an old friend Laramie, he said, “I read your blog everyday and love it.” Why have I not connected with him? He is an incredibly talented playwright, who wrote one of the most moving plays I have ever seen about growing up gay in Montana. It really got me thinking, here is someone who knows my work and who I also admire, why are we not connecting and collaborating and inspiring each other? I guess I didn’t honestly know he was still here. In many ways Facebook becomes a double edge sword, in that it can very easily bring some people together, but has become so massive that it masks others that right before our very eyes. One of my new goals is to begin to meet some of the people within my very community. I am open to have dinner, to have coffee, to chat or just to hang out. I really need this sense of community right now and am going to make a greater effort to reach out and try to discover who is here. Please, please, please if you are living in Missoula or a nearby area, let me know who you are? I want to know more, I want to discover more, and am in need of meeting you. Contact me via Facebook or send me a text or e-mail. Let’s discover how we can collectively begin to feed each other’s needs for socialization.

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