A Self-Care Practice for Finding Balance in Community Building

A weekly ritual to help you find balance between your needs and your members’ needs.

In building communities, we often spend a lot of our time prioritizing others. It’s part of what makes the job feel so gratifying at the end of the day.

On a good week, every day you get to know someone a little better, teach them something, or just be there when they need an ear.

Then, you get to see the people you’ve poured into achieve their goals, become leaders, and help others.

It is an incredibly fulfilling way to spend your days. AND, as you may have discovered if you gather people, it can also get frustrating, painful, and exhausting.

Building community is a deeply personal way to make a living. This means that when we’re overworked, we are likely to not just be physically or intellectually tired (we are those too), we are often also emotionally drained.

A couple of years ago, I realized I was barely surviving my weeks. Things would start out busy and the obligations, to-do lists, and guilt would stack until I had nothing left to offer by Friday. I was doing work I loved and helping people I deeply admired, but if I was honest with myself it didn’t really feel good.

One week I booked a doctor’s appointment (or some other required thing) for Wednesday afternoon. It wasn’t a purposefully fun outing, but I remember reflecting on how much better that week felt. I felt like I had had a midweek break from the stress stack.

One of the benefits of working for yourself (and not having kids) is that you can make your own schedule. I decided to start exercising that privilege.

I decided that one day a week, I would stop work a little early, leave my apartment, and go do something besides work. I soon settled on Wednesday afternoons and I called it Field Trips.

A field trip is ideally a fun adventure that you would usually do on a weekend, like go to a museum, walk around a new neighborhood, go to the movies, except you do it in the middle of the week. I sometimes bring a friend, but often it’s just me wandering around the city. It’s in the spirit of the artist date from The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.

Here’s a partial list of field trips I’ve been on:

• Went to the movies then got matzo ball soup.

• Saw the cherry blossoms at the Botanic Gardens.

• Read a book in the park.

• Went to a cat cafe to meet kittens.

• Went to the beach.

• Got dumplings in Chinatown.

• Browsed a bookstore and then got dessert.

None of these are elaborate and many of them are free or cheap.

The point is less about what I’m doing and more that I have a block of time that feels like it’s mine.

It has made all the difference to my week.

Even if I’m only field tripping for an hour, Wednesday afternoons now feel like a reset. It releases the pressure and allows me to start Thursdays in a much better headspace.

There’s something about leaving work in the middle of the afternoon that makes the whole thing more fun. It feels like I’m getting away with something.

I realized that what I’m doing on Field Trip Wednesdays is giving to myself what I hope I give to the community founders I gather and coach the rest of the week:

• Permission to prioritize their needs.

• Learning how to connect others by connecting with themselves first.

• Encouragement to do things their way.

This is a meta encouragement to you to take some time in your week to give to yourself what you give to your members the rest of the week.

And if that comes in the form of your own version of field trips, here are some tips:

• Start with things you can book in advance. If you already bought the 3pm movie ticket, you’re more likely to actually stop working on time.

• Keep an ongoing list of potential field trips so that you always have ideas on where to go.

• Don’t wait for a friend to be available. Solo field trips feel even more indulgent and free.

• If you’re having a busy week and can’t leave work early, or if your schedule doesn’t have flexibility, make a plan for right after work instead.

• If you have kids and responsibilities that make regular solo fun time impossible, take tiny field trips in your own neighborhood when you can. Get yourself a fun drink from the corner store and take a walk in a new direction.

And if you go on fun field trips, I hope you’ll let me know!

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