Finding TribeS

Finding your tribes — the personal version

I have been finding tribes my entire life, usually without knowing that was what I was doing.

As a child: Brownies, Guides, Sea Cadets, ballet, karate, judo. Each one was a different room with different rules, different people, different skills, and a different version of what belonging looked like. Looking back, the pattern is obvious. I was not just doing activities. I was sampling environments, testing which ones felt navigable, and collecting the ones that did.

As an adult, the same instinct continued — just with more interesting niche options.

At Dudley Canal Trust I was taught how to pilot a narrowboat. My days off were spent winding up and down canals, talking seriously nerdy canal history with other volunteers, or educating members of the public who boarded at festivals. People boarded specifically to out-nerd me. That is the correct energy. I was expected to know too much and talk about it at length. That is not a social liability in that context. It is the entire point.

I volunteered with Citizens Advice, the YMCA, ACCI, and Wolves LGBT — spaces full of people who were passionate about local community, advocacy, minority communities, and equality. The shared cause was the entry point. The relationships followed.

At Newquay Orchard I found nature nerds who taught me how to ferment. I helped them rebuild a donated summerhouse that arrived looking like a Meccano set. I delivered a digital inclusion course. I had hoped to continue there but had to return to Sandwell in February 2025. The kombucha is being restarted after the next kitchen reset — the SCOBY arrived. The kimchi is not being restarted. I had too much of a good thing.

These are not anecdotes. They are examples of the same principle operating across different contexts: follow the interest, find the people, let the connection build around something real.

One of the most useful reframes for neurodivergent identity is the distinction between special interests that are broadly relatable and special interests that are genuinely niche. Some interests travel easily across most social contexts — music, food, nature, travel, general curiosity. Others are more specific — the exact gauge of a particular railway line, the taxonomy of a specific anime genre, the structural differences between yarn weights, the mechanics of die cutting. These are not lesser interests. They are the ones most likely to connect you with people who will genuinely light up when you bring them up.

The practical strategy is simple: follow the five-minute obsession. When something catches your attention — a documentary, a technique, a question, a community — follow it. Join the club. Volunteer. Change direction. Go outside. In those spaces you will find fellow enthusiasts who are delighted to talk about the thing in depth, without social penalty for knowing too much or caring too much.

How to find a local tribe — step by step

This is for when you do not know where to start, or when "just put yourself out there" produces nothing useful.

Start in the real world first.

The best local intelligence is not online. It is held by people whose job is to know what is happening in the community.

1. Your local library.

Not just for books. Libraries hold noticeboards, local group listings, and community event information. Staff know the area. They are also neurospicy-friendly environments by default: low noise, no obligation to talk, no purchase required to be there.

2. Your GP surgery.

Many surgeries now have a social prescriber — a person whose specific job is to connect patients with local community resources, groups, and activities. Ask at reception. This is a genuinely underused resource.

3. Your local bus station help point or travel centre.

Sounds unlikely. Works reliably. Staff at transport hubs often know the area extremely well and can point you toward community venues, markets, and local groups.

Look for the right kind of venue.

Any community venture that appears to be run or staffed by hippies, self-proclaimed witches, or people with strong opinions about compost is almost certainly a neurospicy-friendly environment. These spaces tend to attract people who know more about local nerd culture than they admit, generate low-pressure social environments, and have a high tolerance for enthusiasm, eccentricity, and extended conversations about obscure topics.

Examples: Sons of Rest clubs, community gardens, community allotments, repair cafés, maker spaces, community orchards, environmental charities, local history societies.

Find the specific interest group online.

Once you know roughly what you are looking for:

•Nextdoor app — hyperlocal, neighbourhood-level. Good for finding out what is actually happening within walking distance.

•Facebook local/geographic groups — search for your interest plus your area. "Model aircraft near me." "Knitting [town name]." "Canal history West Midlands." These groups exist and are active.

•Google — be specific. "Volunteer gardening [your postcode]" returns different results than "gardening clubs near me."

•Local newspapers and their websites — community listings still exist in print and online. Check the events and notices sections. Local adverts for clubs and groups are a reliable source that most people have stopped looking at.

Lowest friction option — if going outside is not possible right now.

Online communities organised around specific interests are a legitimate starting point. Discord servers, Reddit communities, Facebook groups, and forums for specific hobbies are full of people who want to talk about the thing in depth. The social overhead is lower. The entry point is the interest, not the person.

This is not a lesser version of community. For many people it is the version that is actually accessible. Start where you can start.

Identity as an ongoing project

The self is not a fixed thing you discover and then possess. It is something you are continuously building, revising, and refining — based on new information, new experiences, and new understanding of old ones.

Late diagnosis changes this process significantly. Many people receive an autism or ADHD diagnosis in adulthood and experience a period of retrospective reinterpretation — going back through their history and seeing it differently. That process is not self-indulgent. It is necessary. You cannot build accurate systems for a person you have been misunderstanding for decades.

The goal is not a perfect, complete, stable identity. The goal is an honest, working one — accurate enough to build from, flexible enough to update.

For the theory of how community functions as distributed capability — how relationships carry load, extend reach, and preserve participation — see Distributed Capability Architecture → The Community Layer.