Last updated on April 6th, 2021 at 12:34 am
The farther I travel down the rabbit hole of social networking, the more I discover about myself and the things that matter to me. Last night’s Crashaversary was key in helping to illuminate this point for me.
Starting with Twitter is much like how you’d first use any new technology or toy—you excitedly play around with it, trying to figure out all the things you can do with it. but you soon realize that simply using Twitter as social media does you no favours. You can send a million tweets out into the depths of the Internet as you please, but it doesn’t mean that anyone’s actually going to LISTEN to you. It doesn’t mean that anyone’s going to RESPOND.
Despite having a Twitter account for three years now, it wouldn’t be until October 19, 2010, where I’d figure out what you need to do to take all that aimless tweeting and endless tinkering to the next level—hitting up the tweetups.
But much like Twitter itself, the tweetups start as something new and shiny. You want to be seen out in the world as much as possible and see as many new people as possible. This is all good and well, but you can only meet SO many new people before it becomes overwhelming. And of those, you can only maintain SO many meaningful relationships. You can only go out SO much of the time. So your patterns start to change.
You stop going out as much for the sake of going out and start going out because people that MEAN something to you will be in attendance. You stop needing to be involved in each and every thing going on around you and start choosing to go to the events where you KNOW you’re going to have a good time.
To me, Crashaversary did all that to a tee. Hosted by Christine, aka @wedding_crasher, this is how she describes Crashaversary:
Crashaversary—A get together to celebrate life.
August 26th 2002, I was struck in an intersection while riding my motorcycle. It was life altering.
Rather than feeling down and depressed this time of year, I’d like to invite you to celebrate with me.
“Celebration” didn’t have to be a big party. “Celebration” didn’t have to have a lot of fanfare and promise free swag in order to have a good time (though e11even was kind enough to give some free swag without prompting, which was very kind of them.) All that celebration involved was having a bunch of good people who WANTED TO BE THERE and have a good time IN THE COMPANY OF ONE ANOTHER.
I found that it was one of the funniest, happiest and sincerest nights out that I could remember in a while. I joked around with Sandy and Rowena, had in-depth conversations with Shoreh (who I’m STILL shocked that I only met for the first time that night!), and loved the time I got to spend—however long or short—with Natasha, Marc, Calvin, Lucy, Tiffany, Lisa, Justin, Jason and Karen. Add the AMAZING food that e11even provided to the mix, and it’s a night I’ll remember for a while to come.
So remember. It’s not about getting to meet “the most popular person in the room”. It’s not about hitting every event or getting as many people as possible to talk about you, follow you or want to be you the next day. No—it’s about what you PUT INTO and what you GET OUT of the situations you’re in. Relationships are never a one-way street, and if you’re always trying to get without giving, you’ll soon find that there’s little left for you to grab on to.
Fun, Food, Friends and Crashaversary—the fourth F. That’s all you need to make a good week even BETTER.
Thanks, Christine.
238/365
