I want a think tank

Or, more specifically, a brainstorming group, or an idea generator. I want people who I know and trust and who think at least a little the way I do--or know how I think--to gather around once a month or something, and we'll just spend five hours or eight hours goofing off, talking, bouncing ideas, and generating wonderful collaborations and solo projects.

I know I could get this very thing in the Puttytribe, and I really want to, but I know for a fact that I can't afford the monthly membership fee. If it was a one-time payment, maybe, but I just can't afford it over and over. And that pains me, because I want it.

But also, I want to find people who live here, where I am, who I can trust and connect with and have on speed dial*, and work with and have fun with, in person. It's incredibly gratifying to know that I'm not alone, that there are other people like me** in the world, but it's also wildly frustrating to find that those people who are like me are 3000 miles away.

See, I've never been all that great at making friends in person and without the structure of a class or a group. But now I don't have a class or a group to hold me up while I figure people out enough to see who I want to be friends with--casual friendships with little in common exhaust me, and if I can't just be myself, if we can't be weird and think of crazy things together, why bother? I have no idea where, here, I can go to meet people, and transportation in this city is a problem.

But more and more lately, I have been feeling the need for a group that bolsters and amplifies the creativity of the people in it. I had that with my LobbyGirls in undergrad, and with my Troublemakers in grad, but now that there isn't school, and we all live so far away from each other, I'm feeling the loss. I want a place where I can go to just be, to collaborate and share and get ideas and work with people who have resources I don't have and needs I can meet--in person. I miss face-to-face communication. The internet is a wonderland of awesome for people like me who have trouble with strangers in the real world, but I don't want strangers, I want friends. I want all my friends to live close by again, and for us to have standing engagements to do things and to make new ideas and to create things with our own hands.

Think how wonderful that would be.

So this is my statement to the universe: point me in the right direction.

And it's my request to my readers: where can a girl go to meet people in a non-skeezy, non-scary way in Raleigh NC? Somewhere preferably free and low-stress and geek-friendly?



Notes:
*Does speed dial still exist? I have no idea if my phone even does speed dial...
**People with many and varied interests, who have lots and lots of creativity but also are shy and awkward and have trouble following through, who people want to classify but who resist classification. Emelie in the link above calls us Multipotentials, and I like that word.