I was in Mexico, and I had already decided it wasn't home for me. San Diego was home.
In my year away in L.A. and Mexico I had craved San Diego everyday. I felt homesick, and homesick is something I hadn't ever really felt before. I knew I had to get back. It's where my community was. I was missing my creative community. I was missing the support system I had so carefully put together during the past few years while building my home base in SD.
But, I was in Mexico and my ticket home wasn't for another three weeks. That's when the idea hit me to put together some meetups for artists in the SD community.
I have been to a few meetups in the past for photographers, and they were always so much fun. I loved connecting with new people and collaborating with everyone. One thing I wanted to be different in my own meetups was the amount of people allowed at each of these meetups.
If you've been to a photography meetup, you've probably experienced slight anxiety by the overwhelming amount of people that show up to these things, especially if it's free and especially if it's your first time and it seems like everyone there already knows each other. It can be intimidating for us extroverted introverts.
So that was my main criteria. I wanted to keep these small. So I planned my first meetup. I called it #ThatPhotoEvent, and I set it to be a 2 hour long photo walk followed by an hour of hanging out over drinks. I wanted it to be low-key and no pressure... and fun.
And it was! Fast forward to a little over a month later, and we had a fun turnout, less than 10 people walking around East Village with our cameras, getting to know each other and just having fun taking pictures.
I was hooked on the connection after being deprived of it for the past year and a half during the pandemic. And creating for the sake of creating felt right. I felt right again.
Thanks everyone who participated. This night made me so happy.