Prompt: List the tribes you belong to: cultural, personal, literary, you get the drift. Talk about the experience of being in your element with your tribes.

The Goth Tribe

I’m going to go ahead and call them the Goth Tribe, even though this label is paltry, misinterpreted and (ironically) pale compared to the immensely colorful, vibrant and caring people within.

I first met this pack of brilliant souls when I found myself in a goth club more than ten years ago, having managed to miss the era at its inception and subsequent height. It didn’t matter; this club was alive and pulsing, and the instant I walked in, I felt safe.

As a person who tends to default to shyness and is not generally a bar-goer, I surprised myself by reaching out and getting to know people–and was further surprised when people reached out and got to know me. It was so easy! No one was judging, no one was assuming, everyone was just out having a good time.

Computer geeks, Renaissance Faire devotees, foodies, Scotch experts, gun enthusiasts, Lego builders….it still amazes me, ten years later, that I’ve found so many people who are like kin to me. Each with their own fabulous quirks, they make Saturday nights that much more special.

And the music is fantastic.

The Super Creative Team, or The Work Tribe

Made up of five people from my department and an auxilary member/personal mentor from another department, this team–these friends–have the power to make the 40+ hour work week seem effortless, horrid snafus seem mere hiccups, and the laughs seem endless.

Our self-dubbed label began tongue-in-cheek, but truly, it only takes two of us together at any one time to start the ideas flowing. Add more of us and the creativity goes nova, thoughts and notions spiraling out into a vista where anything seems possible–with even enough time to do it all in!

It’s not just work, of course. If we made a list, our things in common would span so many categories we’d give up tallying halfway through. Music, literature, sense of humor, experiences; in a half hour’s conversation, I learn more than in a structured classroom with teacher’s notes.

I don’t know how given I am to the “everything happens for a reason” adage, but it almost makes me think I was meant to be here in this place at this particular time in my career. And it’s awesome.

(Yeah,  I’m skipping a few scintillas. Our guinea pig has pneumonia. Pneumonia! It’s been keeping me busy, worried, and more than a little distracted.)