I want to do something, anything, but organizing/participating in orgs is really hard with how my brain works. Theres chapters/locals out here, dsa, psl, frso, etc., but i feel like i cant participate.
I get overwhelmed by noise and large groups, especially if those groups are shouting or chanting. Protests and marches and demonstrations are a nonstarter cause having panic or anxiety incidents at those does more harm than good. Ive tried attending meetings and discussion groups, but theyve been so incredibly difficult for me and i end up contributing nothing and taking nothing away. I cant hear what people are saying cause if multiple people are talking it all blurs into a single sentence. And my body dumps literally all the cortisol into my blood and i have to recover for a good while afterwards.
What can i even do? Like, i could admin a *nix box that serves stuff, i can cook, i can do (very basic) firearm safety, i can do things, but the social aspect is really hard for me. Organizers want to fire people up, but that firing up incapacitates me. How can i attend a meeting when that meeting is geared toward not-me and within 15 minutes im in emergency mode and lose the ability to form solid memories from the meeting, or lose the ability to speak? Last one i went to, it started with chants and that was kinda it for me. I stayed thru the end, but it was really intense and i needed to lay down cry and be held afterwards. I cant participate in those kinds of things in a manner that is sustainable for me.
I want to do stuff, i want to contribute, i want to make the world even just a little bit better, but i feel like all the activities and actions that are available to me are things that are either veryvery difficult or incapacitating for me.
I say don't go to those meetings.
In my local org I tend to dip into the organizing committees meetings only when I have capacity and when there is genuine need for my input, then I quickly dip out again. I stick to an unofficial advisory or consultant (except internal) role and handle some of the structure and I'm a bit of a gal friday, finding areas of need and points of friction then coming up with ways to fix them. People come to me for troubleshooting and advice.
In my experience, orgs struggle the most with back-end volunteers - the people who write up minutes and send out reminder messages and provide intake info and organize their documents and all of that other stuff.
In your case it's worth looking at an org as having a dual aspect - there's the front-facing part with meetings and outreach and activism then there's the back-end administrative/bureaucratic part. If you can't do the front-facing part then approach the leadership and ask if they have any administrative tasks that you can do. Basically every org's leadership is bogged down by them having to manage the administrative side and they are all desperate for people who are good at this stuff that are willing to do it. They are desperate for PA type people to help, trust me.
So if you like an org and you have a connection to them or people who can vouch for you, approach someone in leadership and explain what you have done here in a simplified way and ask if you can take on some secretarial type duties. Tell them you can do IT. Tell them you can do social media posts and stuff like that.
Either they will find a place for your contributions and they will respect you for it or they won't get it. But whichever it is, you'll have your answer about whether it's an org that is worthy of contributing to.
Leave the meetings for people who care. They are mostly a circus anyway. No need to burn yourself out over it because it's seen as The One Way™ to be involved in organizing.
Accommodations start with you; they start with knowing what you need to thrive then finding those who respect that and are willing to work with your accommodation needs. Be ruthless and relentless in this. Become the staunch advocate that you deserve.
Are you going to that meeting? No. Not gonna happen. Don't even bother asking.
Are you going to clear a backlog of 6 months of administrative logjam? Yes. And if that isn't seen as a crucial contribution to organizing then whoever feels that way can fuck right off.
The revolution needs leaders and debates and outreach efforts but it also needs janitors equally as much. Salute to all the people working on the back-end who keep the orgs running, the unsung heroes.
This was really helpful, thank you.
This was heartening, i cant do suuuuper fast steno typing to get everything people say, but i can do minutes and the like (im at maybe 60-75 WPM and proud of it). I can organize shit, i can do administrative work and all of this stuff. This makes me feel like theres (potentially) a place here for me.
Me. This is me. Fuck meetings. Give me the sweet sweet admin backlog!
I'm really glad it's helpful to you!
Don't worry to much about WPM. If you know how to take notes, you don't even need to have a great typing speed because you'll abbreviate and skip useless filler words and all of that. You can always go back and make meeting minutes coherent on a second pass when you aren't working under time pressure.
Also two tips for increasing your typing speed:
On a device where you don't need high security, put your password as "thequickbrownfoxjumpedoverthelazydog" or a similar pangram. Add a couple of characters/symbols at the end if you need better security. You'll probably already get what the purpose is here - you're gonna retype that password in so many times that you'll develop muscle memory for it quicker than you'd imagine. It will be tedious at first but depending on how often you log in, it will only be a few weeks (and maybe less) before you see your typing speed and accuracy get a big bump.
The other one is The Typing Of The Dead. (There's also the original one you can pirate out there.) It is the best typing game you'll ever play because it's fun, the atmosphere gives you so much pressure (in a good way), and as the difficulty increases they start throwing intentionally funny or tricky phrases at you to mess with you. I can genuinely play this for the love of the game. And it's a typing game.
You know exactly what you're looking for. Go get it!
Sudo caches my password for like 3 minutes, so i type this all the time
Omg i love itttt!