Thanks!
First of all, I want to thank everyone that has participated in the project thus far. Without the people that volunteered their time to sit and speak to me about life, there would be no project. It’s as simple as that. Similarly, I want to thank you for reading this. I’ve honestly seen more traffic on this blog than I thought I would, and that’s exciting stuff. It’s cool to think that maybe someone besides me is getting something out of this project as well.

As far as my feelings thus far go, I wanted to touch on a feel things:

It’s Not that Weird

I started this project never having met someone from the internet. Hell, I’d never met anyone that I hadn’t been introduced to or met through similar classes. This can be extremely nerve-racking, especially since the stereotypical internet meetup is rape, robbery, or murder. I think Cheryl can vouch for me when I say this, I was really nervous going into this. I had no idea what to expect and I wasn’t even really sure what I wanted to get out of the project. I’m sure my speech was slow and my attempt at holding a conversation was awkward. However, it’s not really that weird. With every meetup, it gets more comfortable for me and I’m slowly realizing what I’m truly looking to get out of this experience.

My original structure of three questions:

1. What are you passionate about?
2. What’s a life changing experience?
3. What are your religious views.

definitely fuels great conversation, but my skills at facilitating that conversation are still developing. I’ve noticed that in the last three meetups, I was able to take the conversation past these three questions. I started talking a little about myself and I think that I got a lot more out of it. Previously, it was all about hearing people’s experiences and perspectives and simply re-iterating that in a blogpost. However, I’ve found that expressing myself and questioning their beliefs more during these talks not only leads to more natural conversation, but also allows me to get a lot more out of it. If there is a belief that I don’t 100% understand, it would be silly of me to just accept it and then write about it later and as these meetups continue, I’m learning more and more ways that they can truly be mutually beneficial. And I’m having a fabulous time doing it.

More Meetups

I’m having a lot of fun doing this project, and I really want to continue doing it. However, I need some more people to meet with. Next week currently only has one person signed up. I think a reason why some people might hesitant to join the project is because of some misunderstandings about the way the project is set up. I want to clarify a few things:

1. I will not post any information that you want to keep secret. I ask everyone this at the end of every meetup.
2. I will not post your real name if you don’t want me too. You can see that some people chose for me to use an online username and that is perfectly okay. It’s not about who said what. It’s about what was said.
3. I’ll let you proofread it. The turn around time on the blogposts is usually 1 or 2 days. However, if you really want to proofread before I post, let me know. As long as you can get back to me within a day, that’s certainly possible.
4. We don’t have to do it my way. I’ve designed some questions for the sole purpose of generating conversation. If you had a different idea about how you want the talk to go, tell me! We’ll make it work and add some variety to the posts. I also want to point out that you don’t have to answer any question you don’t want to.

Hopefully these points kind of open people’s minds about the idea of meeting with some weirdo that wants to hear about your life. Alternatively, if you don’t want to meet with me personally, but know someone who would, tell them to shoot me an email (ThePerspectiveMovement@gmail.com)!

Also, if you have any questions at all, ask. I will answer anything from project details to personal details if it makes you feel more comfortable meeting with me.

Suggestions, Suggestions, Suggestions

By no means do I think that I’m going about this project in the best possible way. I think that the current structure on the project allows for the insight of others to be distributed to those looking for insight and that was my initial goal. However, I understand that there may be better or more efficient ways to go about it.

I want to stress that if you have anything, and I mean anything at all, in terms of suggestions, please email me. Even if you tell me that you hate the project and would like to see it done in X way, I will take no offense to that. I want feedback and I want to improve this project so that it means something to people other than myself.

Actually, I am looking for suggestions on how to take the project outside of the Reddit community. Although the conversations have been fantastic, I’m seeing the early 20s, white male in some sort of sciences career and not much of anything else. If you have a suggestion of where to recruit a variety of people to meet with, please email me.

Seriously though, even if it’s just something small let me know.

Shameless Self Promotion

Please like the Movement on Facebook, follow it on Twitter so that it can gain some more traction and hopefully attract future meetups. Also, the project email address is ThePerspectiveMovement@gmail.com if you have any suggestions, questions, or would like to join the project.

Thanks again, guys!