“When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.”- Paulo Coelho

Two things I need to say that are probably apparent to all: I am very serious about creativity, and I share both the good and bad in my life. And the sad.

Three years ago, I started a group called the Open Group At Bedlam Farm, now the Creative Group at Bedlam Farm. More than 800 people signed up. The purpose of the group was and is this: to be a safe and nurturing community for serious-minded creative people who wanted to learn and grow in a positive environment.

For 30 years, I have been mulling and writing about the promise of the digital community, especially for like-minded and creative people.  I wrote for one of the very first blogs on the Web, Hotwired, Wired magazine’s media site. It was a great thrill to be living and imagining the future.

Perhaps somewhat naively, I thought I could help create a kind of creative online paradise from my farm, a place where ordinary people could come together and light their creative spark in safety. I wanted to take what I had seen and learned to do some good. Most people are afraid to tell their stories, they don’t believe anyone wants to hear them. I believe otherwise.

I was a reporter for many years, and have been writing online almost from the beginning.  I know the odds, I know what happens when human beings congregate. People are different, they have different ideas and sensibilities, they will almost always find a way to quarrel, get angry, politicize themselves and find cause to be outraged or victimized. For a couple of years, I thought I had pulled it off. Life teaches me that you can never be humble enough.

There was trouble almost from the beginning, as one would expect with hundreds of creatives. The group was too large by far, and many people brought the outside hostility of social media and the Internet with them. Many thought it was another opportunity to mourn their dogs and cats, to be soothed online, or rage about politics. Many were stunned and outraged at the very notion of rules or guidelines.  Words on the Internet are nothing if not free. Many had learned how to be nasty and cruel online.

We pared the group down to about 300 after some bloody days, and things settled down.The group took off.

A lot of good work, a lot of support emerged on the group. Over time, some people came to love one another, not the group. I suppose this is inevitable,  I didn’t grasp the significance of it.  Members of the group came to Bedlam Farm to attend our Open Houses, to meet one another, to rent houses together, to sit up all night talking, to become fast and loving friends.

This summer, the group nearly fell apart, I thought it would not survive, and there were so many lessons in this for me, so many issues of trust, anger, communications, loyalty, friendship, and of course, creativity – the point of the group and the thing that was too often almost overwhelmed and forgotten. Two months ago, I was ready to quit the group and turn it over to someone else.

The conflict was complex and had a number of triggers, many of them relating to me. If you start a group and take the title of leader, you are responsible for it. What happens is on your head, or in this case, my head, and I take responsibility for failing to see what was happening and to react to it in a proper and clear way. I clung a long time to my fantasy of the perfect village, a paradise for people wanting to express their creativity in the open, to come out and tell their stories and show their pictures. And many of them did.

I arrogantly assumed that people joined the group because they shared my vision for it, not because they had their own.

I permitted other people to speak for me, people who claimed to understand me but did not. My fault.

I always wanted the group to be about creativity, not therapy, not grieving, not soothing. It seemed people were rescuing one another every day, helping with sick mothers, dying friends, sending flowers and cards and money everywhere. They were lovely impulses, but not creative ones. It seemed to me that people were being wildly overpraised just for showing up and breathing. One member posted about a walk with her dog, and  people said the story made them weep.

Supporting one another emotionally was not a goal, but the point. People formed separate Facebook groups and chat rooms so they could talk to their friends all day. People started gossiping. Politics erupted, cliques formed, people felt excluded. Real feedback gave way to adoration at times. I felt excluded. People kept warning me that people on the group were “restless,” that a “catastrophe” loomed.  They resented the rules, they resented me, they wanted to be free to say and do as they wished, it was no longer fun, things had changed.

Dear God, I thought, I am precisely back where I have spent so much of my life trying not to be, it felt like Middle School. And I never fared well there.

I made more than a few mistakes.

I spoke too directly, not appreciating how difficult it is for people to read intent on messages and Facebook replies. We set our own traps, of course.  Early on, I talked about Chairman Mao and his beliefs and methods for keeping ideas fresh, for cleaning house. People began referring to me as Mao, and when someone got nasty and I removed them from the group it was said I was “Mao-ing” them.  The good guy, bad guy thing. It became a joke, until it wasn’t a joke and wasn’t funny. It made it okay for people to avoid me or ignore me. It made it easy for me to avoid them.

I let other people define me. There was outrage and anger when I asked that the feedback not just be centered on love and adoration, but also be focused on content, be supportive and thoughtful and helpful. As a professional writer, I know how important Feedback is to growth and development, I was uneasy with people weeping over and celebrating work that was often mediocre or lacking in any point. I thought it was harmful to call every other offering brilliant, when that is a term to rarely be used. I thought tears, like superlatives ought to be dispensed carefully, both were precious.

I warned the many lurkers that they needed to participate or they would be removed from the group. I said I didn’t create the group for people who didn’t wish to contribute. Some people found that harsh and cruel.

There were special secret chat rooms to monitor the day’s news, to stew over my latest utterances and analyze their meaning. People breathlessly tried to keep me informed of all the rumblings, I said I didn’t want to hear them.  I didn’t. People were free to leave. I could feel my group going the way of countless digital communities who could simply not find a way for scores of people to be together in such a fractured country and disconnected medium. Who could not abide rules,  no matter how gingerly and rarely they were offered.

At times, there was so much buzzing and whispering and heavy breathing I thought I was back at CBS News, walking the halls of intrigue. I blame only myself. I’m sure every one of those people believes they were walking the path of justice and righteousness, we all do. The people who weren’t upset with me for setting forth rules that made them feel “unsafe” were upset with me for not setting down more rules.

Did I read all of this correctly, did I see it right, was I reading it right? How can I really say? I am not the one who gets to write that history.  Ultimately a good friend sat me down and said, “look, this is your group, you need to run it the way you want. If people are not comfortable being on the group you created and want, they ought to go. You’re starting to hate your own group.”

Lord. People texting me inside reports with one finger, trashing me with the other. But this is human nature, I know. It is what people do when they are brought together. No one as insignificant as me can alter that reality.

Was I exaggerating this? Embellishing it? Seeing it in a self-serving way? People were calling me a liar, a Maoist, terrifying, enraged, mentally ill. No one – not a single one – contacted me about any of these accusations or asked me if they were true.  No one asked to talk about their issues, or help solve or resolve them. Not one. Was I truly so frightening I asked a long-time member of the group, an honest friend? “Well, you may not like this, but I think you’re kind of big and fuzzy. Don’t take offense.”

None taken, I was glad to hear it.

In recent weeks, these tensions and subterranean calls to arms erupted, and 30 or 40 people left the group en mass. They were very good and valuable people, some of the best and most creative. Most had done great work, had contributed much and been greatly supported.  I considered many to be my friends. The world seemed inverted to me, and I was fairly certain it was my fault. And I was confused. Friends, of course, don’t do this to friends.

I think they were wise and brave to leave, it was the right thing to do, for them, for me, for the group. I hope they form their own group, I hope it blossoms and thrives. I can’t think of a greater compliment.

But it was also hurtful, I’m not going to lie about that. I am not the macho type, I don’t pretend ugly things don’t hurt. Many of these people had been to my house, had dinner with me and Maria, come to our Open Houses. They had called me often to to talk about their work, to seek advice, sometimes with their personal problems, about their ambitions. I believe I tried to help every single time. I was told I did help.  Maybe I didn’t.

Of the ones who left, only one bothered to even contact me, and that was by Facebook message. And I can tell you, that is not the way strong or honest people resolve conflict.  I reached out to some to say thank you and goodbye, once I realized they had gone. One, weeks after she had vanished, messaged me: “we did have a ringleader,” she said, “and I do think the intent was to hurt you, to teach you a lesson.” They succeeded.  I am  hurt. I am learning my lesson. A ringleader? For me?

Most ignored me, refused to answer me, and of course, I soon realized we had nothing to say to one another. If they wanted to talk to me, they could have, at any time.   I am the Dracula of creative groups, too menacing to come near. I  might blog you to death.

And many very good people have stayed behind to continue their good work. The group is soaring and shining, how strange is life.

Eventually,  I got to hear a few of the complaints. They were afraid of me, it was intimidating to talk to a best-selling author. They were afraid I would write about them on  my blog, and share our personal conversations. I was mean to one of their friends. They needed to clear their heads.

But here is the lesson of any kind of creative community. When people love themselves or one another so much more than the idea of the community, then the community is in trouble. So was mine. We are rebuilding. I succumbed to the delusion that in so short a time, I had accomplished a long-sought miracle of the Internet: the truly supportive and enduring digital community. Not yet.

I am a big boy, and things happen. I am moving on, but first I have to absorb the sense of failure and disappointment, and also the hurt. It does hurt. I am wiser. I am learning the lessons I need to learn. I will do better. We are not born only once, life requires us to give birth to ourselves again and again, says Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  Out of the darkness light…I believe that everything people say about me is true, good and bad.

The dust is settling. Those who needed to go are gone. I am happy to be on the group again, it is fun to read it again. I am lighter, relieved.

I am like Charlton Heston with his guns: nobody is taking my group away from me. Suddenly it seems to have returned to the kind of community it was created to be – serious-minded people sharing good work, freeing their inner spirits.

No drama, no secret meetings, no furious texting, no boiling chat rooms. The furies have moved off. New people are arriving daily, many of the people who stayed – 80 to 90 per cent of the people in the group – are flowering, emerging from what some say was a sense of exclusion and a feeling of being overlooked. It seems there is a new beginning, a new awakening.

There is also real loss, real regret.

But now, a new chance for me to build my digital and creative community in a better way.  To learn from my own dumb mistakes.

A new beginning. More one- on- one workshops.  Thoughtful and supportive feedback. A common purpose of true creativity, of a serious but supported effort to learn and grow. No more cliques. No more emotionalizing of creativity. No more weeping over banalities. No more amateur therapy. No more rescues. We take our love to Facebook Messenger. We come together to share our creativity in community, and in safety. We learn how to find our voices and tell our stories.

And this is the boundary. We do our work and share our work and encourage others to do the same. That is where the group begins and ends.

If I end up with 20  like-minded people, that will be a great success. I think it will be bigger than that.

I am more committed to the group than ever, wiser and more determined than before. I will speak in my own voice, stick to my guns, I am firm in the belief that this can really happen. It does take courage to make one’s own mistakes. The thing is, I am fiercely committed to what I do. I believe very strongly that the digital community can be a real and enduring thing of great meaning and power. I believe that everyone has a story to tell, and that their story is important.

Many are on the Creative Group today, they are dancing with us.