From 20-sided dice to obscure terminology, Dungeons & Dragons has a reputation for being a bit intimidating for newbies. That’s why Alaina Forte, organizer of Fairfax Beginner’s Dungeons & Dragons, makes it her mission to create a welcoming space for all fans of the game. Hear Alaina’s advice on building a Meetup group and fostering a supportive community in this episode of Keep Connected.
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In this episode, we’re going to be talking to Alaina Forte, a Supervisor at Starbucks, the organizer of the Fairfax Beginner’s Dungeons & Dragons Meetup group and the organizer of the Nova Wacky Activities group as well. There’s lots of interesting learning about someone who is leading so many different types of people that we could all look up to. I hope you enjoy this episode.
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Welcome, Alaina Forte.
Thanks for having me.
I so appreciate you taking the time to join us. I also, even more, appreciate all the work you’ve been doing the last few years in growing the Fairfax Beginner’s Dungeons & Dragons group to over 1,000 members. You also lead other Meetup groups. You’re a hands-on community leader. It’s so impressive. We sometimes talk to Oscar winners and book authors but frankly, my favorite people to talk to are direct community leaders like yourself. Before we go into the groups, let’s hear a little bit more about you. When did you first hear of Meetup?
I first heard of Meetup in 2017. I was in the hospital for my mental health. I have depression. When I was in a partial hospitalization program for the first time, all the therapists there were like, “You should join Meetup. Everybody joined Meetup. It’s great. You can make friends. You can build communities and interact with lots of new people.” After I got out of there, I joined right away and joined a couple of groups. That’s how I heard of it.
It’s wonderful you took their advice. There’s clearly something very therapeutic about community. I’m not a clinician but depression oftentimes happens when people are in their heads too much and they’re thinking too much. Sometimes the act of doing a companionship can be part of the healing process. I’m happy to hear that Meetup has been helpful in your journey. It’s wonderful.
It’s a very valuable thing in terms of coping and helping distracted leads or help the community build a support system that you can use to help you keep going and keep thriving.
I was thinking about this if you’re comfortable sharing. Some Meetup groups specifically support groups and people go to that for support. Some Meetup groups are action groups like playing Dungeons & Dragons, board games with friends, playing Nok Hockey or ping pong. They’re both important but it’s interesting that you chose for the therapeutic process something that wasn’t a support group. You chose specifically in action. Do you mind talking about that a little bit?
I didn’t join the support group. I didn’t start my own but I joined one and went for a little while. For me personally, I find it more useful to go to Meetup for the support group for a period of time. There was only so much I could gain out of that. I think it’s more therapeutic for me personally to do a Meetup event that is activity-based because then you’re doing something active with people, you’re learning about them and making connections authentically. It’s less about like group therapy or something. I’ve done a lot of group therapy. After a while, for me, it stopped being as useful because spelled all my problems and got a lot of support from them.
I’m fine with talking about this with people, so I’m open about it. It also means that going to group therapy and going to support groups isn’t as useful anymore just because I’m more comfortable with everything. It’s better for me personally to have activities to do with people. Also, when you’re doing an activity, it’s freeing because then you have something else to talk about besides myself and my problems, yourself and your problems. I love hearing about people and their problems. It’s also good to do something else and have bonding before you spill all the problems.
There’s indirect therapy, shall we say and direct therapy. Every person frankly needs both. There’s a time and place for both. Indirect therapy can be even more valuable. It makes me even think about dating where you can set up with someone and you know it’s a date or you can meet through playing kickball together. Let’s talk a little about Dungeons & Dragons. When I think of Dungeons & Dragons, I think about the TV show Big Bang Theory where Sheldon and his friends are playing Dungeons & Dragons. It was so stereotypically a “guy’s thing.” Share with us a little bit about what attracted you to Dungeons & Dragons. What are Dungeons & Dragons? When did you start playing it? I would love to hear about that.
I started playing D&D through Meetup. I joined the board games Meetup group and some of the people I met there were starting a Dungeons & Dragons group, so I joined them. I love D&D. D&D is a tabletop role-playing game. Basically, there’s one person, generally, who’s the dungeon master. They’re creating the background of the world, the NPCs who you interact with and the story. You have your player characters who are the players and they have their own character. Those people are going through and interacting with everything that the dungeon master sets up.
What’s the goal of the game? How many people typically play?
An average group has 4 to 6 members and a dungeon master but you can have groups that have 1 player or 2 players or 10 players, depending on what style of the campaign it is. It doesn’t have a goal. The goal is to have fun. It depends on which campaign it is because there are some pre-written ones. The goal will be to slay this dragon or find these priceless artifacts but some of them are a little more player-driven where the players are like, “We want to explore this region and find out all the secrets of the valley or something.” They do that. “We want to find this character’s missing husband. He ran off with all her money and she wants it back.” It can be anything that you want. It’s like a group storytelling activity. You make it up as you go.
Do you have a set character or do you take on different characters each time depending on the game?
I like to mix it up. I like to play one character for a little while and then I’ll switch. In my group that I play with personally, we switched campaigns frequently. It’s nice to get to make new characters. I have a good time making characters. I usually emphasize one aspect of my personality, not on purpose. I do it on purpose now that I realized I’ve done it in the past but I realized that I was making characters based on facets of myself. It’s an introspective activity in a way. You learn about yourself in that facet of you and then you make a new character that’s a different facet and just exploring yourself.
Meetup has an extraordinary number of Dungeons & Dragons groups. We have 1,064 D&D groups with 766,000 members. When I pull these numbers, I was blown away by them. What is it about D&D that is so popular? D&D has been played for years. When I was a kid, a lot of my friends play D&D. I wasn’t a big D&D player but I remember watching them play in summer camp and over the weekends. It’s something that’s through the ages before the internet, D&D was popular, with handheld games is popular, with social media still popular. What is it about D&D that has withstood the test of time? Why are millions of people playing it around the world?
It’s good to go somewhere where everybody knows your name.
It’s because it is a collaborative storytelling game. A lot of games that you play are more rote or they’re more rules-based. With a board game, you play for one hour where somebody wins and everybody else usually loses, then it’s over. With D&D, you can go back to it every week for hours at a time and you’re all playing together collaboratively. It’s a good exercise for the imagination. It’s like playing pretend again like you did when you were a kid, except for as an adult and with more rules in them by being in a framework. I like that there are rules because it makes it better. If you’re playing pretend and you could do anything, you or at least I wouldn’t be able to think of anything to do but if someone says, “Think of a way to use these three objects in a creative fashion,” then I would be like, “I can use the candle this way. I can use the cup to do this. I can use the long pole to hoist something up.”
People say that freedom sometimes comes from having even more restrictions. That’s part of an Eastern philosophy even, where the more restrictions you are potentially, the more free the mind can become. Sometimes the world that we live in with no restrictions around anything, people feel the most trapped. Perhaps that’s an analogy towards D&D where there’s structure but there’s a tremendous amount of flexibility as well within the game.
The Fifth Edition especially is very user-friendly. There’s a ton of tabletop role-playing games out there but D&D is probably the most popular. One is because it has a lot of users, so it’s easier to find a group. Everybody already knows the rules. If you play any TTRPGs, you probably play D&D too.
You used an abbreviation there. For our readers, tell us the name.
TT means Tabletop and RPG, Role-Playing Game.
Thank you. That’s fine. There’s a whole vernacular.
Fifth Edition is easy to get into. You just need the Player’s Handbook. They have the basic rules for free online so you can make a character without even investing any money.
Tell me about your group. You have quite a lot of members. Before the pandemic, you’re meeting probably on a periodic basis. What do you think you’ve done specifically with your Dungeons & Dragons group? We’ll get to the other group that you lead, which is wacky and awesome. What do you think it is that you did within that group that you love to call it or share with some of the other members and organizers?
The D&D group, I set it up very intentionally towards attracting beginners because I wanted to expand the world of people who played D&D and make it accessible for them. A lot of the D&D Meetup groups I’ve seen are inaccessible.
I was as a kid intimidated. I would see my friends play D&D. I’d see the twenty-sided die. I’d see all the details. I felt like it would take too long for me to learn it. That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t play. I felt intimidated back in the day.
It’s not that difficult but it is intimidating, especially for women because it’s a boys club historically. There’s gatekeeping. There are people who are like, “You don’t know what candle keep is?” I’m like, “I don’t know. Do I have to know that to play?” I tried to set it up in a way that would make it beginner-friendly and friendly to anyone who wants to join. Make it so that anyone who wants to come can feel comfortable. I set it up in the description and the name so that it would be friendly and open towards everyone, except gnomes. We hate them. No, we don’t. Gnomes are welcome. If you are a gnome, you can tinker here. It’s fine.
I wanted to make it friendly towards women because I hate being the only woman in a D&D group. I am the only woman in my D&D group but it’s not my favorite thing in the world. That’s pretty common. It’s like the token female character. People have bad experiences with it and they stop playing if they’re in a minority. I didn’t want that to happen in my group, so I’m trying to make it accessible and safe. The way that I set it up is we only do one-shots because that way you can do a new thing every week. Usually, D&D has played in campaigns but in our group, we try to set it up so that people can play. If they need a group that they like, they can form a group that plays a campaign outside of the Meetup event.
It sounds like you’re doing a lot of things to keep people from feeling like an outsider. The language that you’re using is very intentional to make sure that people understand any language. You’re setting it up so that people can restart every single time. It’s not like they have to continue and be at a disadvantage. Personally, I’m more of a synagogue-goer than a churchgoer but one of the things that we had learned about you beforehand is that one of the ways in which you find Meetup to be so helpful is the ability to build relationships with people and know their name. There are that many places where everyone knows your name as the old TV show Cheers but knowing people’s names, whether it’s a Starbucks or Meetup, sounds like something that’s particularly important. Can you share a little more about that?
I’m not religious anymore but when I was a kid, I used to go to church. It was always nice to go. You do that handshaking part where you turn around, wave at the people behind you and say, “Hi, I’m Alaina. Hi, you’re Bob. It’s nice to meet you. Maybe I already know you.” It’s nice to go somewhere and you know everybody. At my D&D Meetup events, we have a lot of people come out. We used to do 30 people every Monday night. It’s fun to go and be like, “I’m Alaina. Hi, new person. Hi, Kelsey. Welcome back.” It’s good to go somewhere where everybody knows your name.
When people know someone’s name, it’s the entrance into building a relationship. It’s hard to become close in any way, shape or form with someone if you don’t know their name. The best thing to do if you don’t know someone’s name as quickly as you can is to ask them their name again. Too often, people are afraid and reluctant after being in their shoes to say, “What’s your name again?” Years passed by and they still don’t know someone’s name. We want to avoid that. You also run another group, which I love, called the Nova Wacky Meetup group activities. I’ve read some of your past activities and they’re so fun. Share with us a couple of the Wacky activities that you’ve had in the past.
One was fake bird watching. We went to the park. I see you, the royal you, I don’t know. We all wore weird hats so that we could, one, recognize each other and two, so we could be a grand promenade as fake bird watchers. We either watched real birds, made up big facts about them or watched birds that were not there, fake birds. We tried to find the snipe. Have you seen Up?
I have seen Up.
We found the snipe. It was great. We made up fake names for all the birds that we saw. That was one event. We also did giant bubbles. I love doing that. I do that all the time, even outside of Meetup. I do it in random parking lots and in the park. I have bubble juice, which is what I call it. It makes bubbles that are 3 or 4 feet long. You might have seen people do it in the city. Nobody does it around here but I do. It will be a thing. We did paper boat races. Make paper boats, tie them into strings, so they don’t litter, race them and see who floats the longest.
It’s so sad. Why don’t adults do these things typically? I oftentimes believe that people in their 30s, 40s, 50s are afraid for some reason of being a child again. Being a child is so much fun. You look over children, they laugh all the time. All those wacky activities are the kinds of activities that 4-year-olds, 6-year-olds, 8-year-olds would do but you don’t see grown adults doing them. Why?
Once you’re an adult, you become jaded. Not on purpose, but because you’ve seen a lot of more stuff.
I wanted to create an activity or a group where you could find whimsy, wonder and fun in those child-like ways because that’s important. Doing things that you’re not used to doing is freeing. You don’t know what to expect, so you’re experiencing everything new again. When you’re a kid, everything is new, everything is great, everything is like, “That’s the first time I remember seeing a leaf fall from a tree. Has the tree always been orange?” Once you’re an adult, you become jaded. Not on purpose but because you’ve seen a lot more stuff but you’ve never seen people watch fake birds in weird hats.
Just because you’ve seen stuff, that’s even more of a reason perhaps to try to channel one’s inner child. It’s funny you gave the example of the leaf falling. In the fall, we had a number of six-year-olds in our backyard. Hundreds of leaves were falling in chaos. Kids were running around trying to grab the leaf that was falling and they kept trying to grab the leaves. The wind pushes in, so it’s hard to grab. Then I saw an adult run over and start running around with the kids, trying to grab the leaves. I was like, “Yes.” All the adults should go, run and grab the leaves that are falling from the trees because that’s a fun thing to do.
I love catching leaves. I’m bad at it though. It’s surprisingly difficult.
Everyone is bad at it. It’s like one of these impossible things. Right before you’re about to catch it, the leaf goes away. I don’t know how it works.
It looks like it falls so gently and then you catch it and it drops. It’s good to regain that child, the wonder, the whimsy, the magic.
Do you think it’s possibly because of your past and things that you’ve grown from, time in the hospital and other emotional growth opportunities that you have this greater appreciation for whimsy and getting back to one’s inner child?
One hallmark of my personality is what I call manufactured authenticity, which is manufacturing a situation, a place, a way in which you can be authentic and have genuine connections with people. Sometimes I find it difficult to do that naturally in a non-manufactured way, especially because I have social anxiety. I can be pretty awkward, especially in my natural habitat. I do lots of things to manufacture authenticity. Some of them are doing wacky childish things that will make people surprised and make them experience the wonder again. I also have the question of the day and holiday of the day that I do. If I ever stumped in conversation, I’m like, “Do you want to answer my question of the day?” People answer it and then I’m like, “It leads into a better conversation.” I didn’t start doing that before I got depressed because before that or not that I have been always been depressed. I thought I should be able to be normal, make conversation and ask people how the weather is. Not that it’s bad to ask people how the weather is. The weather is great. I love the weather.
When you use the term manufactured authenticity, it makes me think those two words are inconsistent with each other and that’s hard. One should change it to intentional authenticity. Manufacture is a bit of a pejorative. It sounds like there’s a lack of sincerity, whereas intentionality implies that you’re doing something in a focused way and there’s a little bit more sincerity to it. That’s awesome because people need to put themselves in positions to end up being happy. Happiness doesn’t necessarily come to someone because they wanted to or they look around and are like, “How come everyone else seems happy and I don’t?” It happens because you a manufacturer or you’re intentional about creating authentic, meaningful experiences. That idea of the question of the day is awesome because it leads to a really thoughtful conversation and bonding that the weather doesn’t necessarily as much lend itself to. I’ll ask you a question then. What’s the question of the day? Let’s hear a couple of examples so people could maybe learn from this.
Some of them are funny, weird ones. Some of them encouraged deeper conversations. We had, “Would you rather dance everywhere you walk or sing everything you say?”
I would rather sing only because I’m a better singer than a dancer perhaps.
I would so much rather dance everywhere I walked. Dancing seems like serotonin or something for me. If I was dancing everywhere, I’d be so happy. I would have the excuse to dance everywhere because I would be forced to it presumably by some magic or something. Everyone would be like, “Why are you dancing?” I’ll be like, “I have to.” I would love it.
That’s a good excuse because you have to. You have no other choice. What else?
What’s a yearbook-style superlative you’d give to your high school self or your current self?
It’s overly energetic probably.
Mine would be, most likely, to build an architectural monument out of balloon animals or something. I was so into weird crafts when I was in high school. I bring pipe cleaners to school every day.
That checks off the wackiness quotient in terms of balloon animals. When you were in Brown, were you making balloon animals all over campus?
Not so much at college but I did balloon a couple of people’s doors. For April Fool’s Day, I would put a giant trash bag full of balloons in front of their door. They’d open it in the morning and get a balloon raining on them, hundreds of balloons. I did it to my roommates. One of them woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and she got so scared. I felt bad but I love April Fool’s Day. It’s hard to do something that’s a nice prank. I thought balloons would be fun.
It’s all about the person that comes from. I can’t imagine that you doing an April Fool’s prank against someone would cause them to not know anything except for the fact that you’re doing it out of your love for them or you’re caring for them. It’s never been for any harm. One of the things that I’ve been impressed by in this conversation and reading about you beforehand is your focus on creating a real safe space, whether it’s for the wackiness group, whether it’s the Dungeons & Dragons group, whether it’s for women, whether it’s for people with different personality styles. What can people do to focus more on helping people have a safe space in their communities or in their friendships? What advice do you have? I’m sure it’s something you’ve spent time thinking about.
It’s important to make people comfortable so that they have someone to whom they can go if something does happen. If you’re a leader in your community, it’s important, in my opinion, to make sure that everyone within your community is comfortable coming to you and telling you. It’s one thing to make a safe space where nothing bad ever happens, but I don’t think that’s very common.
If you aim for something never bad happening, you’re never going to do anything. Please continue.
It’s more important for the leader to be able to react in case of a bad thing happening. Making sure that everyone feels comfortable coming to you if something does happen, making sure that everyone feels like you’ll take care of them and you’ll be there for them. That’s something that I’ve seen good leaders do in my lifetime, my bosses and different people with who I’ve interacted. I always felt like I could come to them in case anything untoward happens, if someone said a weird comment to me or if I felt uncomfortable in a situation. They would help me come up with a solution and fix the problem. That’s the main thing that I try to do. I make sure that I have good interactions with people where they would feel comfortable coming to me if something does happen.
Accessibility, being attuned to people’s needs and being supportive to people when they do come. That’s very helpful. I also had read about the fact that you’re a supervisor at Starbucks, which does fit your personality. I must say Starbucks is a special company. I have an opportunity to have a conversation with the CEO of Starbucks. He was telling me how much Starbucks focuses on building community within their stores. Our customer service team at Meetup is a former Starbucks supervisor as well. There’s something about that company that focuses on community and creates a safe space for people. What do they do that facilitates that?
One of Starbucks’ main things that they focus on is being the third place. It’s an architectural concept initially because there’s your first place, which is your home, your second place, which is your work, and then your third place, which is where you go to have fun, relax after a long day, go say hi to your friends or something. Starbucks wants to be that for as many people as they can, be a third place where people feel comfortable going to hang out.
Do you see some of the same people coming back and forth where they say, “Alaina, how are you doing? Long time no see?”
My store is a real community store, so I recognize probably half the people who come in every day, at least by name. Other ones I’ve seen at least once or twice. We have conversations to go back and forth with everybody. I love asking them questions. Where I do the question of the day a lot is with the customers. That way, I can have interesting conversations. I can pull people. I started keeping a notebook and I asked people for a song recommendation or a song that they like. I write it down in my little notebook and then I make a playlist out of it.
They must love you.
I love talking to customers. It’s nice to feel like I’m part of a community and I think that my work is that for me, even though I’m working and they’re customers. It’s still a nice atmosphere.
It’s important to make people comfortable so that they have someone to whom they can go if something does happen.
Many people lack that in their day-to-day jobs, especially during COVID. In COVID, it must have been difficult to be a Starbucks supervisor, have the mask and potentially be a little more transactional-oriented than community-oriented. Knowing you, I’m sure you found a way. Being a supervisor must be also exhausting. I imagine the drink orders are coming in furiously left and right. There are different people that you have to manage, that have different levels of skills. What does it take to be a great Starbucks supervisor in case I’m looking for a new gig? What should I be thinking about?
Most people could probably be great Starbucks supervisors and play with their own strengths. One of the more important things is being able to interact with people, being good at talking to people, making sure that your team feels comfortable talking to you and that you feel comfortable talking to your manager.
When you’re training someone, what advice do you give to them, so they feel comfortable to do a great job as a barista or anything else in Starbucks?
If I’m training someone, the main thing that I try to instill in them is to ask questions, learn. If you don’t know something, don’t just go around being like, “Maybe I’ll do it myself.” If you don’t know something, ask for help.
The best time to ask for help is in the beginning. Sometimes what happens is people don’t and then 1 month passes, 2 months passed and it’s a lot more difficult to ask for help. I always point out that probably the best Meetup employees and the best employees in any CEO or other role that I’ve had have always been the people that ask for help the most. People think that asking for help could be a weakness. It’s the greatest form of strength, without a doubt. Is there anything that we didn’t talk about regarding Dungeons & Dragons, Meetup, community, creating a safe space or wacky activities that will be interesting and helpful for our readers to know about?
Being open is important. Being open to new experiences and new types of people is useful for creating safe spaces because if you don’t know what kind of people you’re interacting with, you don’t know your community, you don’t know your audience or anything, I don’t know how you would have good relationships or build a good connection with anyone.
People are complex. People’s inclination to pass judgment and to stereotype others is unfortunately tremendous in the world we live in. People need to get outside of that. A big part of that is being open and understanding that you can’t in any way, shape or form know what a person’s background is, all the events that have happened in someone’s life. When people are not open and they pass judgment, the biggest loser is themselves.
Also starting from a place of goodwill and liking others is important. It’s useful. Honestly, the main time that I’ve had people disliked me is when I disliked them first. If you want to build a community and you want to have good connections with people, you have to like people. You can be a curmudgeon if you want to. That’s fine. I love a curmudgeon.
Some curmudgeons could be lovable. If you think about The Muppets, Statler, and Waldorf, those are two lovable curmudgeons. You could be a curmudgeon-y and still a very special person.
I haven’t seen The Muppets but I can imagine that they’re very lovable. Are they puppets? Puppets are always lovable. Have you read A Man Called Ove?
No.
It’s so good. It’s about a curmudgeon and he’s great.
Alaina, we have something that we do every episode that I used to call rapid-fire questions but as I realized that they’re not that rapid anymore so let’s go through David’s not-so rapid rapid-fire questions. Tell us about the first job that you had.
My first job was in college. I worked for Brown University Dining Services and it was great.
The first time you saw yourself as a leader.
I don’t know if I see myself as a leader.
You are a leader. I need to spell this. Many times they ask people that and they say, “I don’t see myself as a leader.” Sometimes people are trying to be humble but you’re not. You genuinely may not see yourself as a leader. That’s unfortunate because I have no doubt that you are a leader to so many different people. It’s something to embrace.
Maybe I saw myself as a leader sometime in high school. I was quite odd in high school but I had a lot of people do the same things that I did. We would start Haiku battles where you have to talk back and forth in haiku form until somebody messes up. I got people on the weird train with me and that was cool.
You made being weird, not weird. You normalize being weird. Think about how valuable that was for all those people that followed you.
It’s increasing the chaos level with everything.
If you could access a time machine and go anywhere you want at any point in time, where would you go?
I would go to the future because I would want to bring back knowledge. I feel like you can’t impact the past from where you are currently because then you might not be born or something and then it’s all weird but if you go to the future though and you figure out, “This bad thing happens in ten years and if we did this one thing differently, we’d be able to fix it.” I think that’s useful. I’d want to do something that could benefit people.
Alaina, I love how your brain works. You are the only person that has said they will go into the future.
I feel like that’s so obvious.
It kind of is. The fact that no one has said it says something. The reason for you doing it is altruistic. It’s because you could help people if you go into the future so people can learn from their mistakes. What’s something on your bucket list that you’ve always wanted to do and one day, you’ll check that off the list?
This is a weird one but I’ve always wanted to catch a leaf at exactly midnight on the Autumn Equinox. When I was a kid, my mom had a leaf catching contest for me and my sisters. She said, “The first person to catch a leaf in autumn is the queen of fall.” I was so bad at it. I was never the queen of fall but I was like, “What if I wake up at midnight on the Autumn Equinox? I catch the first leaf and then I will be the queen of fall forever.” I never did that but someday I will.
I think that has a Meetup event running all over it there. Alaina, you’re young. You’re a friend and a leader, both, which is wonderful. You have so many things you’re going to be doing overtime in the future. If you think about what you most want to be remembered by, what most comes to mind?
I’d like to be remembered for the times when I was at my best and having a good time, the times when I was trying to make time last longer. The times when I go out of an event and we all stand around in the parking lot afterwards because we don’t want the night’s end. We’re having a good time hanging out. It’s with people to who I want to be closer. Be remembered when I’m happy.
If you want to build a community and you want to have good connections with people, you have to like people.
Alaina, you are motivational to so many other people and to me. You’re an example of someone who embraces their wackiness, embraces being different and looks to create ways in which to make safe spaces for other people to do so. Thank you so much for being the person that you are.
Thank you.
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What I said about Alaina, I meant at the end. She is truly a special person. Many times you have these “famous people” that people look up to. Not enough people look up to Alaina in the world and I think that’s unfortunate. She’s truly leading so many people. That’s something that she should be incredibly proud of. Thank you so much for reading. The things that stick out for me were focused on child-like activities, getting out of one’s comfort zone, making big bubbles and looking for fake birds. Everyone should be doing that. Catching leaves? Come on. The other thing that stuck out for me was manufactured authenticity, finding ways to intentionally create opportunities that provide meaning in one’s life. If you liked this episode, leave a review. Subscribe as well so you can keep getting access to our show. Remember, let’s keep connected because life is better together.
Important Links:
- Starbucks
- Fairfax Beginner’s Dungeons & Dragons – Meetup
- Nova Wacky Activities – Meetup
- A Man Called Ove
About Alaina Forte
Alaina Forte graduated from Brown University with a degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics. She now lives in northern Virginia and works as a shift supervisor at Starbucks.
Alaina is passionate about combating loneliness by building communities and helping people form strong relationships.
In her free time, she enjoys playing Dungeons and Dragons, making giant bubbles in parking lots, and exercising her creativity in new and exciting ways.
Last modified on December 13, 2021
