Community To Be Proud Of

Ya gotta love the rapport you have with any community you join – a community to be proud of, indeed!

 

 

 

 

In fact – according to the Windows 11 copilot, Facebook placed a more focussed effort on groups in 2017 when Mark Zuckerberg announced a new mission to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together”.

In this post I intend to do a little reminiscing and then tell you why my ties with current communities are so important and to be proud of.

I asked my Copilot to give me some benefits of belonging to an online community and it gave me ten bullet points. Run a similar query on your own if you are interested in that.

Just know that I am PRO Community for all those ten benefits. And down near the bottom of this post, I talk about my current communities of importance.

 

Communities That Last

I thought I’d take some time to point out some of the lasting communites that I still have a tie to and perhaps why they are important to me.

I COULD trace all the way back to a Grade 4 choir. And choirs  in general – I am proud to say that I’ve been a part of.

There were the grade school choirs; there was the Junior High school choir and there was the High School Concert choir. In junior high I went from singing Soprano to Bass overnight – Like night and day!

I participated in the making of two concert albums with the High school choir. We’re on vinyl! There are a handful of connections with friends that I keep up with from this high school choir. It was where I learned to sing the Canadian National Anthem in a Bass part and with a second verse.

I volunteered my voice in the music ministry of numerous Catholic churches in Ontario, Alberta and BC. In fact I shocked the family and friends when I sang parts of the mass for my Dad’s funeral. No one really knew I could do that.

And I was a member of the ConocoPhillips Christmas choir for quite a few years in a row. And in fact, I caught up with my friend who I sang in a grade 4 choir with when I found out he was also living in Calgary Alberta (We went to school in Barrie Ontario). And I got him to join our Christmas choir. He belonged to ONLY 5 choirs that year, lol and he played a good renditon of the Hallelujah Chorus on organ. And I know most of the bass part of The Hallelujah Chorus – by heart.

 

Language Learning Communities

My participation in learning group communities started with the Languages department of our high school. They organized trips to interesting places and I was part of the group that went to Cartagena,  Colombia in Grade 12.

My bad – when I was American I should have known the highschool progression – how you Americans call each of those years – all I know is junior and senior. Canada makes it nice and easy and we count up to 12 (13 for when Grade 13 existed). I received Two High Schoool diplomas.

I was a part of the elite bunch of us that went on to Grade 13 in Ontario. It was great prep for your first year of University. I hear that Grade 13 has now been discontinued in Ontario Canada.

Then throughout the years after high school, I continued to pick up camraderies with other folks wanting to learn Spanish, French and Japanese.

While I have not kept up with these other communities I do have my tribes as a Mainframe Computer Programmer via one year at Humber College in Toronto. There was the two year program as an Industrial Electronics Engineering Technologist and there was the camraderie with us Computer Techonology students – another two year program out of SAIT (the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology) in Calgary. Three college diplomas over five years to be proud of.

 

Health and Wellness Communities

I was in my fifties when I figured I better work on getting in better shape in preps for getting older. My posture sucked and I even remember a supervisor at work referring to me as always being hunkered over my computer as I worked – an image I wanted to rid myself of.

So thanks to the Corporate powers that be – a discount was presented on getting a gym membership with GoodLife. I knew for prior gym memberships, it’d be popular with me for about a month then other things would pop up. This time around I went with a Trainer.

I built much camraderie with my numerous trainers throughout the years. In fact I had a very strong Jedi council: A trainer, my doctor, my holistic doctor, my chiropractor, a massage therapist, and a podiatrist. All of these leaders help me cope with having camraderie with life as I get older.

And I dare say that all of the tropical vacations I took can be formed into their own special group under the health and wellness umbrella  for camraderie. Lots of Mexico, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Cuba and Hawaii.

 

Online Communities

Any online program that I join will typically have regular meetings. My excitement builds all the more with connections to the general populous of these communities as well as the leaders teaching us their stuff. Such camraderies had me introduced to MLM, Direct Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Drop-shipping, CPA marketing and email marketing.

There was also the Higher Landing group of cohorts that attempted to get me transitioned from Oil and Gas work over to Clean Tech. I even got my Grizzly Certification via this group that I found on LinkedIn.

 

Current Communites of Importance

I’m happy to say that I’ve settled in on a current group of affiliate marketers involved with the Internet Profits company run by Dean Holland in the UK. We have a wicked web of interconnections that keep us involved. Mentorship groups, coaching groups, affiliate system groups. We have alotted time just to hang out and other more formal events like the quarterly partner events with guest speakers. I may not yet  have the regular monthly income I seek, but these groups help me keep it together – and keep me focussed on a proven plan.

If that’s something you want, simply check out some of the free 10 Minute video link under my picture in the sidebar of this blog (or near the bottom if on mobile).

I have two other groups that I support whole-heartedly.

The first one is a group of friends in Lompico California. The Canada Day party crowd. You see, I was best man at my buddy Bill’s wedding with Julie from California. And that year in 2007 began an annual event – The Canada Day party in Lompico California. One year both locals and visitors pulled a band together in Bill and Julie’s backyard and people were up dancing from the get-go. The Santa Cruz folks are weird like that lol. I even had the prestigious duty of singing the Canadian National Anthem at dusk.

The Canada Day party is celebrated in Lompico usually on the weekend before the actual date of July 1. Some years I just returned home and other years I stayed behind to take in the Independance Day celebrations. I’ve been equally impressed by the firweorks out on the water in San Francisco; catching fireworks looking into the valley from the Santa Cruz mountains into Scotts Valley; and even the small town in-front-of-everyone’s-homes fireworks in Colusa, California.

Part of my goal going into retirement is that I get to keep up my travels to that beloved Canada Day party in Lompico California. I have not travelled since the pandemic started and I am really missing it. I’ll miss it again this year and I pledge that I WILL NOT BE AS FINANCIALLY STRAPPED NEXT YEAR. I will be missing my Lompico community this year.

I mean like – Bill’s sister is even coming from Ontario. Bill’s sister and her boyfriend at the time came with us on an eight hour hike up three mountain ranges up to a place called Fryatt’s Hut one year when I was living in Jasper. The last half hour of that hike is the steepest portion where we were switchbacking up what they call, “The Headwall”. If you really want to break someone, simply invite your sister from Ontario who has never set foot on a mountain, let alone an eight hour hike that goes up constantly. The weeping started about halfway through the trek – poor thing.

And last but not least for communities of value is a time of celebration for Calgarians and for any of the visitors to the Annual Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. I like being able to get in on the grounds for free on certain days – so you don’t have to be rich to take in all the excitement. The Calgary Stampede runs from July 5 – 14 in 2024.

One of my first blog posts was done about a year ago and you can check it out here.

 

Let me know in the comments about a community that you are proud to be a part of.