Ten years ago, a new Barnes & Noble bookstore opened near me. Books are still relevant, because you just can’t hold an e-book the same way you can a real one. When the store opened, I also started a writer’s group. We’re both still going strong after ten years.
The problem with a monthly group or organization is that people have trouble committing to the schedule. Of course, all of life is based around scheduling, and the problem is not just with groups getting enough people together to meet. Even television schedules change at the last minute, although it’s usually when a big star has died and a network wants to devote time to a marathon run of a program in which they starred. Lately programs have been cancelled at the last minute because a star was caught being human (or, on occasion, sub-human). Music stars get sick and cancel tour dates, and some things like those mini workshops at your local craft store die before the first class meets. But I digress.
I wonder if a study has ever been done on the question of how frequently people give up on a scheduled event after the first one? I’m sure gyms have piles of memberships which started January 1st and fell by the wayside before February 1st. College course drops, church attendance (I have seen two churches go under just this year) also go on this list.
Maybe people really are not inclined to commit to anything. It would explain divorce, blown diets and such. What does it really take to commit?
For one, it takes a mature and stubborn sense of duty. That blown diet or gym membership came from a premature sense of self-defeat. If the act of eating a donut is really more important than long-term weight loss, you don’t feel that sense of duty. If that popular program on TV beats out standing up at a piece of gym equipment, you feel no sense of duty.
For my writer’s group, I have a circle of people who are committed to the craft, but not able to attend monthly meetings. At least I do know they are out there working on their projects, in addition to being employees and spouses and dutiful children to aging parents and whatever else fills their days.
But it does get lonely sitting in the Barnes & Noble without a bunch of us together, in one place, talking about what we do.
We’re a scattered generation, going this way and that, rarely congregating to actually talk, because what we feel we need to say is put into an electronic message. Even when we are in a room together, the phones and computers are at eye level and we don’t engage. So we’re committed to them. I’m equally as guilty, with a presence on social media to which I commit time once a week to add this blog.
It would still be great to sit together and meet eye to eye and just commit to being engaged. That’s what I hope the next ten years brings us.
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