The great community shake-up

The pandemic got people feeling a certain way — and now those effects are snowballing us into a new normal.

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired in ways I’ve never been before.

It’s affecting all corners of my life. I see it at work, where a big org change sets me back far more than I expect, and I feel no energy to build the remote-work friendships I need to work through it.

I see it my social life, where I’ve stopped asking friends to “catch up” because it means that I’ll have to pore over my calendar and jigsaw it all together, and I just can’t.

And it’s happening in my interests, where this week, I resigned from my advisory board position at a non-profit and stepped down from leadership on my frisbee team because I no longer know why I want to organize things.

For those of you that know me personally, you know that this is not normal. I’m that person that cheers people on and brings humans together. I take on leadership in groups when no one else rises to the challenge because I care.

But all the responsibilities that I prided myself for carrying? My will to do so is fading. My identity as a community-builder, an anchor, is crumbling. I feel guilty for running away - I should have been able to handle this. Is doing something different really okay?

Things are changing in our communities

This identity crisis that I’m facing - I don’t think it’s just me. I’m seeing more of this in my community than I can ever remember. Friends and co-workers are resigning from hospitals, schools, tech - because they need time to get away or because they are questioning their very career path. In my frisbee world, team rosters are getting shaken up as people are on the search for something new. At the local non-profit I was a part of, the team we served was shrinking because people didn’t have the capacity to participate. So many of the people I know seem fed up with the emotional loads and idiosyncrasies of their current communities, and they want to start anew.

What is happening? We’ve all heard about “pandemic burnout”, The Great Resignation — but these terms were being thrown around like candy over 1 year ago. Why does it feel like things are changing so quickly now?

The pandemic has fundamentally changed us - and the effects are snowballing

It is obvious that we are not the same as we were before. The pandemic changed our definition of “normal”. And with everyone’s lives turned upside down, we as a collective got the space to question everything. What do I want my normal to be? How do I want to spend my time? What do I truly want in my life?

Most of us have never had the time to sit with these thoughts. And now that we have, we’re finding that our wants, our needs, even our very identities, look drastically different.

Fast forward to today. The world is re-opening. But as we slide back into normalcy, we’re finding that the old normal doesn’t fit right.

Some of us realized that we need time to recuperate after work, so no, we don’t want to go back to 5 coffee-dinner-boba dates a week. Some of us found that we only want to be a part of communities that we can walk to because commuting sucks. Some of us no longer care about achieving lofty goals in our sports because all we want is to have fun with friends. For me, I discovered that I need time to simply participate in communities and not take the reins so that I can figure out what groups are truly right for me without the obligations of leadership.

We cannot go back to where we once were, so we’re changing things up. And now that we can see our friends, family, and coworkers in person, the desire for change is only spreading faster.

These shifts in our communities can feel alarming - but change is okay. Your community’s needs will shift over time. Leaders step down. Teammates leave. Sure, it’s happening at an accelerated pace for now and that will always feel unnerving. But in due time, others will step up. New people will come in. The community will settle on a new normal. So let’s be nice to each other and not take anything too personally as we all figure our shit out.