You are going about your daily life. The routine keeps you happy and healthy. The financials are sorted. You are living the good life. Yet, something seems to be missing. Introducing, theme based community events! Community events are, as the title suggests, events scheduled for a set time around a community. For instance, if you are a member of the inking community, you can ink and think for thirty days. These help you practice your thing alongside people driven by passion around the same profession and/or hobby.

Here are nine reasons why I think community events are the coolest things ever!

1. Misery loves Company

Community events involve a community. Small, medium or large, this will be a group of people who really care about doing something specific. You like writing prompt based micro fiction for thirty days straight? Fictember got you covered. Whether you know how to write micro fiction isn’t relevant. The only thing that matters is you want to do something. You won’t be miserable alone. Someone will be there to help you out, whenever you need them to. You won’t be alone.

2. There’s strength in Numbers

You won’t be in it all by your lonesome. Unlike the twig that snaps with a little pressure, human beings need groups, a bundle of twigs that won’t snap no matter how much you try. Community events draw out the twee-s from the entire world. These puffins get together around their passion projects and simply create. Whether it is coders coding or gamers gaming, these events do make our emotional core stronger.

3. Creative Collaboration by Participation

Collaboration has become a buzzword in professional media circles for a reason. It works. When you collaborate, you feed off each other’s energies. Instead of contemplating things while swimming in the miserable soup of you psyche, you can collaborate with someone. This someone will find you via these community events. They might be like you or completely unlike you. Together though, you guys could create magic. I created two books with people I found via a LinkedIn event.

4. Building an Action driven Community

The potatoes you find via these community events will be willing to potate with you around the niche that brought you together. You have an action driven community at your disposal for advice, support and critical appreciation. That is literally, figuratively and metaphorically amazing!

5. Finding mentors becomes easy

People with experience often join community events to see whether they still got it. Instead of spending hours looking for mentors, you can simply participate in such events. Collaborate to create along the way. You will definitely find people who will rise above the crowd courtesy of skills and experience. If you participated earnestly, you can simply approach them with a mentorship request. Mostly, you will get a yes!

6. Networking of the best kind

You can do a brute force networking attack on Social and Professional Media platforms. I would rather just do this instead – participate and vibe with the adorable fritters of any community I get involved with. This would lead to networking with intention. It will also give you an opportunity to customise your networking messaging.

7. Constructive Feedback from people who walked the talk

You will see three common types at these community events. It here refers to what the community event is about (writing, reading, painting, coding, building, et al.).

1. Those who love it.
2. Those who want to try it.
3. Those who want to see it.

All of these individuals will have the intention. They will also have some degree of experience. So, when they criticise your work, it will be constructive; helpful.

8. You have fun in Groups

Life really isn’t hard, if you’ve got some adorable snoots to bop. Things are fun when you do them in groups. The sprints that happen during NaNoWriMo are insanely productive and fun writing exercise. Why? Mostly because people sprint together and have fun on the way.

9. Something to look forward to

NaNoWriMo, Inktober, Huevember – these are three events I do regularly. Fictember is something I started on LinkedIn. I know these events will happen irrespective of my participation. If I am blocked creatively, these events provide ample incentive to unblock. You can give this a shot. Trust me, it is worth it.

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Let me now show you the results of my community events.

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo is the National Novel Writing Month of November. Every year, people pledge a set amount of words and then they just get to writing. The general figure is 50,000 words in 30 days. I have done NaNoWriMo twice and I got one book out of them (which I successfully pitched to an agent). Hear my experience.

Fictember

Fictember is something I started with a friend on LinkedIn. The nonfiction to fiction transition is hard for writers like me. So, I asked the community and they participated. We got together and wrote prompt based micro fiction for thirty days. It was challenging and it was fun. You can join Fictember as well.

Inktober

On a rather gloomy day of September in 2020, as I contemplated the upcoming doom which is Preptober (preparation of NaNoWriMo), I just felt overwhelmed. I didn’t know what I wanted to write. My personal life was a bit of a mess. My professional life was painfully normal. I was just overwhelmed. There is no better way to describe it.

Then came the magical unicorn which survives on the tears of photoshop and crushed dreams. Instagram promoted an inking event – Inktober. Inktober is a prompt based inking challenge which runs throughout the year (Inktober52) or you can participate in it for an entire month (Inktober Classic). This is where you make one drawing per week throughout the year or you ink continuously for all the thirty one days of October. No matter what you choose, you are only allowed to use ink.

Now I am an ambitious racoon. Instead of foraging through the forests, I always choose to dive head first into a pile of trash. I therefore chose to torture myself by preparing for NaNoWriMo November and by inking prompt based drawings for thirty-one odious days. 

That wasn’t all. On top of the prompts for Inktober 2020, I decided to be an over-smart masochist and aspired to link all the 31 prompts to writing. To simplify, I chose to make thirty one drawings using just ink and paper. These drawings were not going to be random doodles. They were all going to follow Inktober’s assigned themes and I was going to link them all to writing.

I am happy to report how I succeeded. I succeeded so well, I am going to do the same for Inktober 2021.

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You are probably wondering why I am telling you this! It’s simple – I just want you to know how trying different things that seem like torture could actually turn out to be the thing that brings you peace. In the extremely busy, chaotic lives most of us lead these days, we often forget that us humans, we are not born with a manual. We are blank slates. We figure things out as we go along the path of life. If you don’t try the thing due to any excuse, well, you’re missing out.

Also, I wanted to brag a little. The sentiment being, “Oh look what I did!” This pompous puffin who couldn’t draw a straight line used outrageously expensive ink and some weirdly angled ink pen to ink writing theme doodles for an entire month while working, studying and going through life as is. If this lazy cat can do it, so could you.

Fun fact: This is my first ever blog. I have never written about personal experiences because I thought personal is, well, personal. Going by that lovely logic, I have been sitting on so many personal stories of joy, sorrow and extreme mundanity, I could talk your ears off. Who knows, maybe I will!

If you want to know whether I become someone who overshares in the upcoming future, sign up for my newsletter using the link below. Also, let me know what you want me to try next!