I met a lot of Recursers this week, with this one weird trick:
I gave a bunch of stuff away (and sold some other stuff).
For the most part, I only advertised it to RC, on Community. I didn’t want this stuff to go to waste and I knew that Recursers would be reliable and follow through on what they claimed, and I had a hunch that there’d be enough demand based on what else I’d seen posted to the NYC forum.
And my reward was having a bunch of people show up at my apartment, and everybody was super cool and friendly and interesting and appreciative. Sure, it feels a little silly that some of them were people I’d seen at RC itself and hadn’t talked to yet, but the volume of new connections at RC can be overwhelming and this was an unexpected but delightfully surprising result of re-homing a bunch of material possessions. (And I also got to feel good about getting rid of a bunch of stuff, because I tend to feel possessed by my possessions and downsizing makes me feel freer.)
Granted, this trick only works if you have stuff you actually want to part with. But it got me thinking about other similar interactions, like a progressive RC dinner party, or hosting RC talks in Recursers’ living rooms (like Sofar Sounds). Mostly, I just feel good about meeting a bunch of RC people who were new to me and thought it’d be fun to share the story.