Meetnope

I got rejected from a meet-up group earlier this week.

I got rejected from a Jane Austen meet-up group earlier this week.

Couldn't believe it.

JANE AUSTEN.

I was part hurt, part bemused, and part baffled. I'm definitely not the biggest Austen nerd around, but I'd have to say I'm a pretty goddamn big Austen nerd. I thought I had made that relatively clear.

Not being in the club, aayyyyy, I'm pretty OK with that now. If I'm not good enough to talk about Jane Austen with them, well, I probably don't want to anyway. But it was surprising.

And in a weird way, relieving.

A while ago I read that book about being amongst Janeites. Although I enjoyed it, it gave me some unease. Sometimes, I really like being around people who are the same nerd as me. Recently, I talked with someone who had a similar point of reference when it came to the media we grew up with. Instantly I was talking excitedly about old shows we used to watch, and stories we loved, and I felt that heady excitement that I used to feel when I was young. It was a kind of excitement that I rarely experience anymore... not for things I love today, and not for things I used to love. Sometimes, though, that excitement stops there. You can only swoon so many times over the same thing.

Sometimes, I prefer to talk to people who are nerds completely different from me. Recently, I talked with someone who was so nerdy that I had to say "I don't know what that is," and "I don't have the vocabulary to describe it to you." (I was trying to describe about a musical instrument that I knew and they didn't, but they speak music fluently and I don't, so our language was getting crossed and it was getting quite confused). And THAT got me all excited because sometimes, listening to someone else get excited about nerdy stuff they love is just as good as nerding out yourself.


With someone who is the same, I worry that I won't move forward. With someone who is different, I worry that I can't keep up. So I'm not sure if I even wanted to meet with the Austen meet-up people or not, in the end! Maybe it would have been fun for one or two times. Maybe I would have made some friends. Maybe we would have had tea and crumpets, or maybe not and I would have been disappointed. I'm not really hurt by the rejection after all. Even without a group, I still have Austen, and that's the thing I'm really here for.