Is it because high school sucked?

The thought just hit me that perhaps my desire to create and participate in strong and supportive communities comes from the fact that high school sucked.

Maybe the reason that so many of us who are online choose one of two roles – that of the troll or that of the protective friend who wants everyone to fit it. Human psychology could lead us to go down one of these paths and I think that based on our life experiences, this leads us to trend towards one lifestyle or another. I realize I may be sounding very black or white in this, but just thinking to my own personal experience, I lean towards wanting folks to feel welcome. I want to introduce all my friends to one another in the hopes that they’ll bond, find jobs for each other, create businesses or just purely share a drink and have someone to laugh or vent with.

I refuse to be the high school girl that gets jealous when the popular girl is invited to the party for fear of her stealing all the attention. There’s room for all of us in this and we all have something unique to bring to the party. Try to examine this in yourself the next time you start to feel negativity towards someone in your network. Ask yourself if they are truly someone who you should be so catty towards? Are they deserving of your negative emotions or should you just whip out some jazz hands and break into chorus with them? That happened this one time at band camp…