Flaky by Reel
I was hoping to string together a couple of ruck marching events this weekend. Instead I got a lesson in how useless Instagram reels are for actually coordinating anything.
A couple of local ruck marching groups post their events as reels. One account posted about a workout for Saturday — yesterday, at this point — and it turned into a mess before it even happened: when I asked for details in the comments, other people showed up saying there was no such event. The person who’d posted it never answered. Because it’s a reel and not a regular post, there was no way to screenshot it into a reply and just point at the thing — Instagram doesn’t let you attach media to a comment. So it never got resolved, one way or the other. I still don’t know if Saturday’s event actually happened.
That unresolved mess is bleeding into today. There’s a separate event advertised for this morning, and after yesterday’s runaround, I don’t trust that it’s actually happening either — even though nothing’s specifically wrong with this one. One flaky reel poisoned my confidence in the next, right when I’d been looking forward to hitting both.
Here’s why this lands harder than a scheduling mix-up should: I left a landlocked midwest city during early covid because I was isolated and wanted to live somewhere people still worked out outside. A coastal city with a big outdoor fitness scene delivered more of that than most places would have — including a real vet/active-duty fitness community I’d hoped to plug into. But it turns out that scene is also full of people who are flaky and transient, which — fair — I’m about to be one of the transient ones myself.
So instead of a weekend of stacked workouts with other people, which is what I was actually excited for, I’m sitting here having decided I’m not going to spend $100 on a rideshare and get up at 5am for an event a stranger’s silence has left unconfirmed. Which is the right call. It just also means spending the morning alone instead of doing the thing that would’ve helped.
I don’t think the community here is bad, exactly. I think it’s better than a lot of places, and worse than I let myself assume when I moved. I’m hoping wherever I land next does better. But I’ve learned not to bet a 5am wake-up on that hope until I’ve actually seen it show up.
Drafting assistance for this piece was provided by Claude (Anthropic). The account of events, analysis, and opinions are my own.