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Clubs aren't the place to find friends....
I'm involved in several different clubs and organzations. I've always been that way. No one club can satisfy me and my interests.
One of the down sides to being multi-faceted is that other people simply aren't interested in seeing the other sides of me. They only want to see what I have in common with them.
It happened a lot at my old church -- St. Francis of Assisi Church in Centerville. Other than the Catholic faith, I felt the people there didn't want to know all about me or my views. At social gatherings, I'd stand in the middle of the hall, waiting for people to come up and talk to me.
It happened again last night, at the USS Bismarck meeting. I won't get into details, but there was some potentially divisive club business that was discussed. I mentioned that I had completed and survived the New Warrior Training Adventure (it says so on my certificate), that I was the only one in the group to have done so, and offered to mediate any future situations if needed. One person rolled their eyes. But did anyone come up to me afterward and ask me about ny experience? No!
I've tried the curiosity approach for months -- including wearing Mankind Project T-shirts to club events -- and that didn't seem to work. Maybe the other people in the club simply aren't interested in what I have to offer them, or what I do or have done outside of the Bismarck. But no one has told me, "Please don't talk about this here again." So I'll keep doing what I'm doing.
There are a few folks in the Bismarck who I get together with outside of club meetings -- Friday night dinners, visits, etc. But there are some folks in the group who choose not to do that with me. This only reinforces my opinion that "fans are not friends".
My want is to find an organization where all of me is welcome.
One of the down sides to being multi-faceted is that other people simply aren't interested in seeing the other sides of me. They only want to see what I have in common with them.
It happened a lot at my old church -- St. Francis of Assisi Church in Centerville. Other than the Catholic faith, I felt the people there didn't want to know all about me or my views. At social gatherings, I'd stand in the middle of the hall, waiting for people to come up and talk to me.
It happened again last night, at the USS Bismarck meeting. I won't get into details, but there was some potentially divisive club business that was discussed. I mentioned that I had completed and survived the New Warrior Training Adventure (it says so on my certificate), that I was the only one in the group to have done so, and offered to mediate any future situations if needed. One person rolled their eyes. But did anyone come up to me afterward and ask me about ny experience? No!
I've tried the curiosity approach for months -- including wearing Mankind Project T-shirts to club events -- and that didn't seem to work. Maybe the other people in the club simply aren't interested in what I have to offer them, or what I do or have done outside of the Bismarck. But no one has told me, "Please don't talk about this here again." So I'll keep doing what I'm doing.
There are a few folks in the Bismarck who I get together with outside of club meetings -- Friday night dinners, visits, etc. But there are some folks in the group who choose not to do that with me. This only reinforces my opinion that "fans are not friends".
My want is to find an organization where all of me is welcome.
no subject
So for instance, I have absolutely no interest in most professional sports. If someone is wearing a t-shirt with a football team on it, I am exceedingly unlikely to ask them about it, because I don't find sports interesting. I do not, however, think there is anything wrong with them for liking sports. I don't think there's anything wrong with their wearing that t-shirt. And I may end up liking them very much despite finding that particular aspect of their interests not particularly captivating.
I don't think it's necessary for friends to share all of the same interests. (Which is good, because I'd have basically no friends if I expected that - almost no one in SF fandom reads as broadly as I do in mainstream literature and the classics; I'd be screwed if I required that similarity to be friends.) So if no one is biting based on that t-shirt, maybe you won't find a connection based on that one interest. So try another - you say you have lots. Or try approaching them and asking about their interests. If you show interest in them, they may show interest in you. It sounds like you are taking the lack of shared interest in this one topic to mean that they won't want to know about any of your other interests; that just seems like a hasty generalization.
(And once they get to know you, they may want to hear more about that interest too. For instance, I'll listen to Roper talk about baseball FAR more than other people because I like him and I've started to see why he finds it interesting. I wouldn't have likely paid much attention to a stranger doing it, but once I have a connection with a person, I find their interests more interesting. I won't necessarily develop a huge interest myself, but I might at least want to find out something more.)
So I wouldn't give up - it's easy to take this perceived lack of interest as meaning that you'll never find people with commonalities, but that's not true. You just may need a different approach!