The Place: Cafe Medici

The Cup: A cappuccino for Allison and a French Press coffee for me.

Background: My pal Jill told me that her friend Allison was going to be in town for SXSW and hooked us up.

Allison was at SXSW for two reasons. Professionally, she works in the new media space. Her day job is is Director of eMarketing, Chickasaw Nation Division of Commerce. A passion of hers is researching and studying social and digital communities. Check out her website for further info. From the site, I found the three questions that she is driven to explore and that her research are based around:

• What does the word tribe mean?
• What does the experience of group identity actually looks like?
• Can online groups result in the same strong connections people have offline?

This work is fascinating, and she is an incredibly gifted writer and researcher. She wrote a three part series on digital tribes that can be downloaded here. I will share a little more on this topic in just a moment, but first, a few other interesting nuggets.

Allison has a half-written romance novel that features the mafia, terrorism, and a Bollywood-style casino in Las Vegas. This project was just a whim set into motion after a conversation with a friend. In talking about writing this book, she told me that after getting halfway through the writing of it, she put the project down and didn’t work on it for four months. One day, she was thinking about her characters and realized that she’d left them in the worst possible situation. Just after building an enormous amount of sexual tension (like any good romance novel), the characters get on an elevator. And there they remain, to this day. Stuck, lusting after one another, in an elevator.

Considering this predicament she was making her characters suffer through got her thinking about what goes on in the consciousness of the characters when the author isn’t around. “Like, what ever happened to all those nurses from those cheesy 80s hospital romances?” Allison asked. Yeah, where are they now and what are they up to? This led to a plan for turning the initial romance book into a trilogy.

I wanted to know what Allison thought her friends might be surprised to learn about her. She told me that she’s a secret seamstress. She has made dresses for her girls, clothes for herself and quilts, in addition to darning various items in disrepair.

What is Allison’s guilty pleasure?  For me, it was her answer to this question that caused me to realize just how incredible people are. I know, that’s an odd question to lead me to that realization. In our short time together, I was only able to get to a tiny fraction of Allison and her story. However, I have learned that it’s in these tiny glimpses, offered up in moments of contemplation or in answering a seemingly mundane question, that the brilliance of a person shines through.

Allison’s answer was, “Watching Sons of Anarchy.” Guilty pleasure because it’s TV watching, I suppose. Allison was quick to tell me that the show has correlations to her work and her research. The Sons of Anarchy are a fictional motorcycle gang and Allison says, “It’s a story about a tribe.” Through the show we see the themes of identity, belonging and value systems. You like the characters, despite some of the heinous acts they take part in. Allison says, “You forgive them because they are functioning according to the ethos and value system of the tribe that they’re in. We embrace the characters because we understand that we all work according to the values of our tribe.”

Allison contends that in modern society, we are all walking around with fractured identities; identities that require an enormous amount of effort to hold up. When we meet someone for the first time, they are a stranger. They don’t know your grandma; they don’t know the story about when you almost died at age five when you fell into the community pool. We used to know each other. We used to be a part of the same tribe and we knew each others stories. Now we are forced to try to maintain a sense of self and quickly impart that “story of self” when we meet a new person. Meanwhile, we all live in similar homes, with furniture bought from the same stores, dressed in the sames clothes eating at the same restaurants. So much sameness, yet we are all unique. This causes discord.

She goes on to point out the questions that arise about the Sons of Anarchy members belonging to the tribe, which are also questions we might ask about our own tribes: What does that kind of belonging/identity mean? What does it offer you? What does it cost you?

Really insightful questions. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have answers to them just yet. I’m interested in figuring it out though, and maybe you are too.

In parting, Allison shared some wisdom she’s learned and a daily practice she tries to maintain. Allison begins each day by laying in bed and thinking. She used to be joined by a fictional drill sergeant who stood over her, haranguing her of all she had left undone and the massive to-do list in front of her. He barked orders until she could no longer take it and popped out of bed to get started. Now, she puts him in check. Instead, she greets the day with gratitude.

Allison says, “It’s not all up to me. I strain and strive to get my ducks all lined up in a row, but it turns out that so much of it is completely out of our control. That doesn’t mean that it’s without purpose or meaning. I’ve just begun letting go of trying so hard to make things work or avoid bad things from happening. In doing so, I’ve created more space for being present and for gratitude.”

I had no idea that in such a short amount of time, a person could make such an impact. Allison is proof that inside each person lies ideas, questions, stories, passions and dreams. She reminds us that we need to slow down and remember that while we are all unique, we are all also of the same tribe. Be kind to one another and listen to each others stories. The lessons you learn are likely to amaze you.

To learn more about Allison, visit her website or follow her on Twitter.