Why Erik is starting a community

Here’s a little background behind why I’m launching a community. During high school and half of university, I was super shy and didn't have many friends. A roommate introduced me to Japanese anime shows, and I got hooked. I wanted to watch them without English subtitles, so I decided to start learning Japanese. I joined a Japanese study group halfway through university, and started making friends with Japanese international students. Later, I co-founded a new student club for Japanese language exchange. The time spent there are some of my best memories!

Photo of Field Day event with members of the Japanese language exchange club.

Photo of Field Day event with members of the Japanese language exchange club.

After graduating, I worked in Japan for 3 years as an English teacher. While there, I took an online habit building course, and ended up becoming a teacher's assistant and community manager. I enjoyed that a lot more than singing ABC’s and entertaining Japanese kindergarteners with the same basic English words week after week.

I returned to America right before Covid hit. I've been taking quite a few online courses during this time. One of them was Write of Passage. I started a morning writing group last March, which is still ongoing. The friendships developed there have reached the level of my college days.

Through all of this, it became one of my dreams in life to eventually facilitate my own online community. It recently dawned on me that there was no good reason to wait on working to turn this dream into reality. So, here I am!

What to expect

Now that the BASB cohort is over, you may be worried about implementing all the stuff you’ve learned. It can be hard to keep ourselves motivated in maintaining our second brains and sticking to new habits. I hope to offer you a community where you can continue on with other like-minded people!

What you’ll get as part of Erik’s community:

Sunday weekly reviews. This is how it started. Grounding your week with the accountability and support of others doing the same is the motivation many of us need to be successful. For now, these are held every Sunday at 8:30pm ET over Zoom.
Support from Erik. I will be setting up our homebase on the Circle platform**.** There will be a space where you can ask questions to me and the community. No question is too big or too small! I will personally respond to all of them.
Monthly calls. This will be an opportunity for us to share the things we have been learning or creating, as well as to ask and answer questions. I’ll run a poll to decide the best time to schedule this. These sessions will be recorded and shared on Circle.

Here are some of my ideas for the community as it expands:

Additional weekly review sessions, to accommodate more schedules and time zones
A framework for accountability buddy pairing within the community
Feedback groups for content creation (for the Express part of CODE)

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