Believe it or not I was notoriously bad at telling stories. Crazy, right? It’s true.
It’s a title no one wants to have, the bad story teller. But, that was me in my friend group. It isn’t as bad as being the one who farts all the time and is always blamed for any unpleasant smell in the air regardless of whose fault it actually is, luckily I didn’t have that title, but being the bad story teller was definitely close second. Whenever I got together with my friends and I wanted to tell a story they immediately found a way to discredit my story telling ability. Now, I will admit, I wasn’t the best. But still I didn’t always tell the worse stories out of my friends and always ended up receiving the most criticism for my ability. This was hard for me because I loved story telling and to be told your bad at something you love doing is heartbreaking.
I had learned to love story telling from listening to them by myself. Whenever I felt alone or like I just needed to hear someone else’s voice other than the one in my head I would listen to stories. My favorite stories to listen to were on The Moth podcast. For those of you unfamiliar with The Moth, it is a non-profit that is all about the art of crating and telling stories. I stumbled upon them when I was walking around Barnes and Noble after taking advantage of the Starbucks inside and saw their book dressed elegantly with a dark, navy blue cover and a gold constellation of a moth on the front with the title “All These Wonders” accompanied by “True stories about facing the unknown”. Immediately, it took me in. I hadn’t opened the book yet but I was already surrounded by the eloquently crafted stories told by an array of people. Of course, I bought the book and immediately went home to read it. About four stories in, I realized that all of these stories were told live and recorded. I had the brilliant idea of listening while I read them. Okay, yeah that’s essentially what an audio book is but still I had the idea before I realized that’s what I was doing…so this is also a story of how I invented the audio book just to be disappointing that audio books were already a thing. I already knew what audio books were too, so not quite sure what I was thinking when I came to the Epiphany that more books should be recorded and shared online but whatever.
I listened to them for hours and once I had finished the entire book, I listened to more. During the summer, when I needed to get out I went on drives. I got in my pearly white Kia Forte, connected to Bluetooth (because Im cool), rolled down the windows and opened the sunroof (like I said before, Im cool), threw on my sunglasses and listened to stories for hours while driving around (we already went over this 2 times before how many times do I have to say it).
Those long drives listening to hundreds of people’s stories from all walks of life is what made me come to appreciate the art of storytelling. I had hundreds of new perspectives on life just from ordinary people telling stories that have changed their understanding of life. What I wanted most was to be able to tell my own stories and search my own life for those type of stories. I just needed a platform.
I thought about doing a Moth slam somewhere but I wanted prior approval of my stories before they were recorded in speech. I needed a place for trial and error; a place where I can get good feedback beyond the pitch of an audience’s clapping afterwards.
I decided I wanted to start a blog where I could be free to tell my stories to others and test the waters of real story telling. Not the shallow stuff from high school. No, I’m talking the storytelling that widens the lens through which we view life. I’m talking about stories that help people understand life by providing my own perspective.
The blog was a perfect place to put my stories, with the minor exception that it had no stories. Primarily because…well, I didn’t have any stories to tell. What the hell do I know about life and how the hell did I learn it if I know anything about it. I had to really think about what I had learned throughout my life that has changed my perspective. At first, this was hard, really damn hard because I still had no stories. It went to far without having any stories so I decided to listen to some more of The Moth stories and found some inspiration.
I knew I was going to really have to dive deep into my own mind and really look back on my past to see how it shaped my future. Just imagine the scene from Harry Potter…Order of the Phoenix where Harry and Dumbledore are using the magic dream pool. That’s what it felt like I was trying to do…minus the magic. Again, pretty freaking difficult as I don’t live in a fictional magical world where that’s possible (or maybe we do and were all muggles, conspiracy theories another great form of story telling). But as I was saying diving deep in your mind when you’ve been trying to suppress it the entire time is hard. It took a lot more story listening before I was able to come up with of few of my own, then slowly I chipped away at the barrier I put up around my mind and found a fountain of youth, that is they were all stories from my childhood which ended about a year ago so you would imagine shouldn’t be that hard to think of.
I felt like now, I am finally able to explore the art of story telling and truly understand the meaning of my daily experiences and how significant they are to my understanding of the seemingly ever complex concept of life. Finally, I can pass down what storytelling has taught me about my own life down to those who read the stories I have told and understand more about their experiences and their stories.