Two years ago I lamented that I am not friends with my coworkers, so added befriending my coworkers as a goal to 43 Things. Two years later I am scarcely better friends with my coworkers than I was then. Yet I don’t consider myself as having failed, necessarily.

The problem that I was trying to solve, I believe, is that of electronic decontextualisation. So much of my life happens interpersonally and online; my life has long lacked social connection with people in real life.

When I worked at la Madeleine, I had a number of regular customers with whom I could sit down and chat. Moreover, at almost any time, I could strike up conversations with new customers, as I did with a philosophy professor from University of Dallas. The ability to make tangible connections at whim is something my previous job offered but my present one does not. It was a big way in which my life had less decontextualisation than it havs now.

Being a member of a community of those who share an interest is something that I have also lacked, something that I could pick up with my coworkers, but I just haven’t been interested in my job itself, because it is filled with decontextualisation. I work with my hands alone, either on computers or at a computer. My conversations are online except for boring conference calls. No one else has my job. Finding a way out of decontextualisation at my job would require changing my job, not merely befriending my coworkers.

These days I have capoeira and swing dancing. Both are communities which have stable membership, capoeira more than swing dancing. There is physical interaction among the members of both groups, which is beautiful. There are also opportunities for social get-togethers with members outside the groups . . . as evidenced by my recent dating of one of the people in my swing dance class, and by the capoeira party I will soon attend. I’m beginning to appreciate this slow building of familiarity with a group as whole through simple participation.

My life slowly gets filled with more and more real activities and real communities, and I slowly reduce the demesne of electronic networking in my life. In some time, perhaps a year, I hope to be able to say not that I’ve befriended coworkers, but that I’ve become part of tangible communities.