S5E43 I Joined a Book Club ... Just to Read

🎀Show your support by subscribing to the channel 👉https://www.youtube.com/@iamabowalways?sub_confirmation=1

Regular episodes drops every Tuesday and when the spirit hits.

tiktok: @iamabowalways

Transcript

Speaker 1 (0s): All right, so on camera, but I just wanna say I joined another book club. My existing one, I don't think in my neighborhood is happening anymore, but I joined another book club, but I don't wanna participate. All right, so if you're new to my channel, thanks for joining. I'm As black opinionated woman also, and Isabel, I talk about whatever I wanna talk about.

I don't always niche down or niche down or whatever the word is, right? I, I just, you know, share my both thoughts and, and that's where I'm at with it. So let's get on into it. So, yes, I'm going to come off camera because it's a lot easier for me to not have all of this, like flare and stuff like that. So I'm gonna be on camera so I can turn off my light. Okay. So this is the deal.

I Joined a Book Club, sorry, I'm trying to get the phone. No, is dear. Did not just run across my, my path. Lord Jesus. All right. Sorry. I'm getting myself together. Getting myself together. So, look, I joined the book club because I actually enjoy being in community. I, my, my kids go to a new school and, you know, I'm trying to make sure I'm part of the community because I like to, you know, have an idea of what's going on with my kids.

And it's just the people that they're, that they're around and who are their new friends, the parents, and all these things. So I joined this book club, and my understanding is there are two books. I'm not sure if it's a quarter or if it's a semester, I don't remember. And I was like, okay, that shouldn't be a heavy lift. What I didn't realize was it was a heavy lift, not because of the reading, it was because of me.

I, I like being in community, but I've come to the conclusion, I think I, I don't, I think I'm just, I don't know if I wanna do the work. Meaning I read the, I read the book, we had a book club meeting maybe a couple weeks ago, and I didn't go, and then they emailed me. They're like, yo, what's going on is, is everything okay? Like, you read the book, blah, blah, blah. And I had read the book, I was completely prepared, but I realized besides the fact that I think I was just drained, I was like physically drained and mostly drained just from everything, right?

I, I think I'm just getting to the point where I pick and choose how I want to negate, right? And I think when I joined the book club, I wanted to be in community, but I, deep down, I knew that in order to be in community, like you need to give something. And I find that oftentimes now I'm not sure how much I want to participate or give. I understand it's a phase, but I'm curious if anybody has been in this, this, this phase.

Because this is the thing when you're in a book club, or at least in my opinion, it depends on what the purpose of the book club is. Some, some book clubs are purely for social, some are for intellectual stimulation, some of it's networking or it can be all the things. But in order to really be a participant, you typically have to engage in some sort of way.

And I, I realized that I, I wasn't prepared to engage, I wasn't prepared to provide a part of me. Because see, this is the thing. Even if you think that, okay, I don't wanna be that social, the club is social. And when you are talking about the book, you know, one of the things I've learned is when people give their opinions, commentary, et cetera, they're coming from a point of view.

They have a lens based off of their current environment, maybe their past whatever. And I know sometimes my little slick mouth wants to pop off because sometimes people will say things where I feel like they don't read the room. Heck, I know I don't always read the room, but when I'm reading these books And they listen to people talk, and I'm like, how, how did you get that? You know? And I feel like I can be judging, and I don't know how much patience I have.

So now I know I missed the first one And they were looking for me. Apparently, I didn't think they cared that much until there was a reach out. So now I know I need to show up to this next one coming up in a couple, couple weeks, two, three weeks. And I, I, I don't know what it is about me right now, but I, but I do know this, when you are in community with people that still requires you to give something, you can't be selfish, right?

'cause you won't be in community. And, and I guess for me is I know that if I go, or when I go to this next book club, I need to participate. Now, oddly enough, when one of the book club members, or the ones who's running it reached out to me about the last book, I thought it was a really interesting email because the book that I read, I was kind of like, I read the book and I felt like I, I had a perspective that I thought was quite negative.

But when I read the email about the, how people who were there when they were discussing the book, I found that we were somewhat similar in thought. You know, here I am thinking that, I was like, I don't know about this. I don't agree with happy, like most of this stuff, it just, you know, and I'm thinking that I'm on an island by myself. And I, and the fact that the matter was because I didn't go to the book club and I didn't get in community with people and I didn't share my thoughts and I wasn't willing to hear what happened was I missed out on learning that many people felt, maybe they didn't use the words the way I would've used them, but, you know, our way I would've named it.

But they felt similar. Similarly, anyway, I wanted to be in a book club to read the books. I wanted to hear what people's thoughts were. But I guess I just didn't wanna have to actually participate. I wanted to be a passive active member, if that even makes any sense. I wanted to passively participate, actively listen, and not, not passively contribute.

And I don't think that's fair to anyone else. But anyway, I think the biggest thing was knowing that when you're starting in a book club with new people, you've gotta get to know the personalities. You gotta get to know their thoughts. You know, that people come from different backgrounds, they have different points of view. And I think for me, I just didn't have it in me to engage, at least not when we had our first book club.

But I think this speaks more to who I am right now, which is I'm 49 years old and I don't want to engage as much. Now, lemme give you a sidebar. When I am attending one of my kids sports practices, there's one particular group, or you know, the greats one particular practice I had found that I, I engaged with one person, maybe two, but like I, I just found that I didn't have a whole lot in common from what I could tell with some of the others.

And there was always this one person who would come in and seemed just incredibly negative and messy and gossipy. And it turned me off because this particular person has nothing nice to say about anyone. And then it gets back to me about how this one particular person was saying something just completely disparaging about another parent. And I have witnessed the complete opposite.

This person's just saying a bunch of stuff, and I'm like, that's literally not even true. Now, it wasn't my dog to fight, but, you know, I, I just didn't want, and I think that's the reason why I just don't wanna be a community. Like I wanna be a community, but I don't know if I wanna do what it takes to be a community of people, because I don't wanna deal with that sort of thing, right? I'm liable to pop off and say something. Now, the information that had been shared with me was not shared with me directly. So I didn't want to, you know, engage and say, well, I heard this, that, and the other.

It wasn't about me. But, you know, I, I, I just didn't like what was being said about this complete, this other parent when I had witnessed the opposite, right? I dunno, I think that's the reason why I'm just kind of like, at the point where they say it's so hard to make friends and everything like that. Not to say that I'm making friends, but I, I don't wanna deal with it. I think I'm just in this space where I'm like, you know what? I'm good right now with just me, my thoughts, my coffee, you know, my, my, my, my family.

I mean, of course I engaged with friends and stuff outside, but I guess where I'm going with it was because, because I kind of, I feel like I'm getting off track. The point I wanted to make was I Joined a Book Club so I can be in community with people at my kids' school, at their new school. But I recognized that when I joined, I'm like, do do I really? 'cause that will require me to discern, which just seems like too much of an emotional heavy lift. You know? I would have to engage.

And I'm like, I don't know how much I truly wanna engage. I wanted to just selfishly read the book and passively listen. But I realized via the email that I got that this was definitely going to be a very active participation and I didn't want to actively participate anyway. This was kind of like a short little, I don't even wanna call it a rant. It was just something, an observation I noticed about myself and, and where I am right now. You know, you know, when they sing, like when you get older, no new friends.

It's not that people aren't open to new friends, but I can understand why people are like, I don't wanna deal with it. Right? You don't wanna to start all over. You don't want to build foundation. You don't wanna have to discern, you don't wanna, you know what I mean? You don't wanna have to do all the things in order to, to weed out, you know, the good, the bad, the ugly. All right. That's pretty much all I got. This was not meant to be, you know, like wildly deep. We weren't going deep dive on a whole bunch of stuff, but if you like the content, go ahead and subscribe.

I know I don't come on camera as much, but go ahead and subscribe, and if there's something compelling that you would like me to discuss, I'm more than willing to give it a crack. But yeah, I've been definitely, I think giving myself space away from creating tons of videos. All right, until next time, I guess this should come off camera and say goodbye. Okay, hold on. If I like there, Hey, oh, by the way, you guys like my hair.

I, it's like a little bit of an ombre vibe, you know? I'm always doing something. All right. You have a good one.

...