My People (per Rands)

A common theme that runs through discussions of new parenthood, and especially new momhood, is that of isolation. Parents with young babies end up spending a lot of time … with the baby. This problem was mitigated for me personally by a couple of things. First, TheGuy works at home, so while I was home with TLG for his first few months, TheGuy was here too. Second, I live a large portion of my life online. And the Internet never left me. Third, I’m an introvert (in the “people exhaust me” sense), anyway. So my social needs are not as great as some others might be.

Now, I did, and still do, feel twinges of that isolation. Between childcare and work and early bedtimes for the boy, we just don’t get out much at all. But it’s slowly getting better. And again, I have the Internet and a flexible job. I’m doing ok. I only grumble and feel TOTALLY STIR-CRAZY occasionally. And my people are really understanding.

My people. Yeah.

So I read this piece that Genehack (who’s allegedly blogging again) linked to the other day by Rands on finding “your people” and it resonated. He writes about finding “your people” and how you know when you’ve found them. A couple excerpts:

The best way to discover if someone is Your People is absence. If, when they return, it’s as if they never left, they are Your People. [...]

There are more of them than you expect, but their number is disguised by the ebb and flow of their presence in your life. [...]

Your People instinctively know who you are and are able to say accurate and valuable things to you and about you with stunningly little data. [...]

You get mail all day from everyone, but you always stop to read mail from Your People. [...]

As we edit our days into these stories, there is always a risk of fiction. This is why you need to identify and nurture Your People.

You tell these stories to Your People without reservation. Your People love your stories — fiction and all. They love how you tell them, they laugh about the lies you tell yourself, and then they stop and they tell you the truth.

TheGuy was instantly MyPeople way back in the day. That bit about accurate things on little data – it’s super-spooky when it happens. Genehack and Katxena are particularly good at that for me. The email thing, too — I love to get email from MyPeople and often re-read even the most banal to remind myself of their voices. (SV, KA, I’m looking at you, for example.) There are a couple other older/professional/moms/bloggers out there on the Internet I really feel like are MyPeople – well, at least in some of the ways Rands talks about. There are even a couple of people I tweet with (but have never met) on Twitter that I’m 99%-convinced are MyPeople. Or would be if our paths crossed on more than Twitter.

Unfortunately, it’s not like you can walk over to someone and say: “Hey, am I YourPeople?” The reciprocity matters, to an extent. But it’s something that emerges over time.

I do want to revisit this post by Rands periodically to remind myself to be on the lookout for more of MyPeople and to also remind myself to value those I’ve already found.