What Does It Mean To Be Part Of A Community? (A Digital Nomad Reflects)

This coming spring, my wife and I will have lived in our adopted home city of Sheffield for two years.

I've been thinking about what it means to be part of a community. It feels like a particularly pertinent question when my country (the UK) seems so divided politically at the moment.

For those of you who don't know Sheffield, I give some of the reasons why I love it in the podcast below and also in this article in a local magazine.

To set the scene, before moving to Sheffield we had been living as digital nomads, living and working online in different countries, (for anyone who wants to know more, we run a LinkedIn group for people involved in or interested in this life, with more than 3000 members). Immediately prior to moving to Sheffield we were living in India. We've also lived in Spain, Germany, Portugal, The Czech Republic and Hungary.

We have really got a lot out of the digital nomad life and it has enabled us to have some great experiences and to learn about other cultures. We are hoping to live abroad again in early 2020 in fact. However, the reality is that when you are living in a country with no intention to put down roots it is a lot harder to feel fully part of a community. Perhaps you can start to do it a bit if you are there long enough (I once worked in Japan for two years, for example) or if you are lucky enough to find people who try really hard to involve you in local life, as I've experienced on a number of occasions.

I grew up living in one (amazing) place, Brighton, in the same house for all my childhood. Staying close to where you lived for much of your life was the norm for many people in my country and probably many people in the world until recently, but that is swiftly changing. It brings both opportunities and problems that I think many of us are only beginning to grapple with.

In my own case, a couple of years ago I was starting to feel that I missed a place to hang my hat (if I had one). A place where the rhythms of life over time would become familiar to me and I would feel part of something bigger than myself.

I remember a distinct emotion as a digital nomad, when we were in a car on the way to the airport to travel to our next destination. We had been living in Lisbon, in a welcoming apartment with a little garden, a lemon tree and a local cat that I could never quite entice down to play with me. We had been there long enough that I felt it had got under my skin a bit- the smell of local rolls in our kitchen, the trams trundling past, the astounding coffee and the haunting sounds of Fado. Then in that car, all of a sudden I knew it wasn't going to be home any more and indeed I had no idea when I would see it again.

You might think- and I would totally agree with you- that these are lucky 'problems' to have. I can't believe that I have had the chance to live in other countries and am very grateful that I live in a world and was born into a situation where it was possible for me. However, I realised that at some point I wanted to connect to somewhere on a longer term basis- and with Sheffield, we've found it.

Since moving to Sheffield I've tried to throw myself into life here. That includes setting up a new meetup in the city (with my wife), becoming Chair of a brilliant local charity, running training, extolling the virtues of living in Sheffield to others and being part of a coworking space in the city for a year.

It hasn't all been plain sailing- sometimes settling into a new area can be hard. It especially isn't easy to constantly put yourself out there to meet new people- we knew almost no-one when we moved here.

However, in Sheffield I feel I have found the sense of stable community that I think was lacking from my life. I'm starting to feel part of things. I like so much about life here. I can see how I could be happy living here long term. I like the understated yet warm Yorkshire approach to life. I like seeing the city develop and change around me in thousands of ways. In our local park, I've loved seeing the baby swans grow and become adults as the seasons changed the landscape around them. It has been special just to be in one place long enough to notice local traditions coming around for another year.

Community means different things to different people and I'm still only at the beginning of my journey to discover what it means to me.

Below is my LinkedIn post from very early on in my time in Sheffield. The kind responses in the comments made me feel that I would like it here.

Since moving to Sheffield and staying in one location for a while I've been able to experience some things that were missing from my life when I was such a transient member of different communities.

It can be exciting to always be living somewhere different. Even when I've been in one location, I've often moved between areas. In Berlin we lived in four different areas. In all my years living in London I think I've lived in maybe eight places. That is a real treat for the senses and in many ways I am sure it has made me more adaptable and resilient than I was before. As someone who needs to have my own time and space quite frequently I have also enjoyed the anonymity of not being too rooted somewhere. However, at this stage of my life I'm really enjoying the flip side of that.

Right at the end of the podcast above, I- almost in a slip of the tongue- call Sheffield 'our city'- including myself as part of it. For me, that is a special thing to be able to do.

As for the swans in the picture at the top, if you'd like to see what they looked like when they were tiny, earlier this year, here you go:

What does community mean to you?

Alex Swallow is The Influence Expert and author of 'How To Become An Influencer'. A free copy of the book and many tips about growing your influence can be found at www.theinfluenceexpert.com. You can join his online course, 'How To Network' free here. You can also see his viral LinkedIn post '100 LinkedIn Articles- Key Lessons' here.