Storytelling
(As part of my blog-a-day goal, I’ve set aside Sunday for a day of a bit more reflection; for posts that may go a little longer, and that allow me to just look in the mirror a little. These are more self-indulgent than my normal blog posts, so I’ll hide most of it beneath the jump text. Thank you for your patience. 
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Most days when I post to this blog, I’m doing so from our home’s little office. It gives me a nice view on the street outside, where I can occasionally see the neighbors doing neighborly things: kids riding scooters, couples taking their dog for a walk, guests bringing a bunch of balloons to a party…it’s almost like I’m living in a ’60s sitcom, sometimes. As I work at my desk with the window in front of me, I can also look to my left or right and see a vast array of books.
My book collection isn’t what it once was — it’s been weeded in dribs and drabs over the years, until just a few months ago I decided that freeing up space in this room was more important than shelves upon shelves of books I never read and are only even here because I got them cheap at used book sales and they seemed like a good idea at the time. So there aren’t as many as there once were, but still: there’s a crapload of books around me. More importantly, there’s a crapload of stories.
I didn’t grow up in a particularly storytelling household. TV, books, movies…those were more distractions than objects of value. Less so with books, just because our culture in general teaches that books = good, but my parents’ bookshelves always seemed to be pretty static things. And outside of the more-or-less annual slide show (yes, we had slide shows, though those ended when I was still pretty young), there wasn’t a lot of time spent sitting around telling stories. This is not to disparage my childhood, or to suggest that it was neglectful, I was just raised more in an environment of doing than telling.
Only…I’ve always been a story-lover. I always had the TV shows I loved and wanted to follow, and then later the escapes into Narnia and the Phantom Tollbooth’s Lands Beyond, to Choose Your Own Adventures, Nintendo games, comic books; these things stirred something in me that an environment of doing couldn’t touch. And once my junior high English classes introduced me to classic works of literature — Huckleberry Finn and A Tale of Two Cities and the (abridged, I later realized) Count of Monte Cristo — there was no turning back.
Stories have grown to be a key component of who I am. Because of my love for stories, I’ve learned how to take glimpses into worlds which I haven’t directly experienced. All the characters I’ve encountered in the books and movies and songs and TV shows I’ve explored have taught me how to see through eyes that are not my own. I’m not saying I always do these things flawlessly, or even correctly, all the time, but it’s the approach to the world I most strive to meet, and I’m not sure it’s an approach I’d have taken to if I didn’t have these guides to lead me on the way. And my enthusiasm led me to a career in libraries which, while presently stalled, is something that defines me in a very real way. And I married into a storytelling family, which is a wonderful and strange world (and occasionally a little alien, given the upbringing I described above).
This is not to say that stories have always been beneficial to me. I can be known to get a bit too passionate about needing to keep up with a TV show. Comic book collecting is not a cheap hobby. And, as I said at the start of this, those books can really intrude on your space after a while (not to mention, they can earn you some serious grumbles if you ask people to help you move). But when I can tread that careful line between love of stories and obsession with them, when I can let them inform me rather than consume me, that’s when I’m at my best.
I actually find it a little hard to tell my own stories. I’m not sure why — doubts about whether, should I try, I’ll actually have something to say, maybe. That comes back to the purpose of this blog-a-day project, ultimately; I need to tell little stories to see that I can tell stories. I admit, most of what I’ve written here so far is fluffy top-of-the-brain stuff. It’s not that I don’t want to go deeper, but before you can tap the depths, you have to skim off what’s on the surface.
Jon Stewart recently did an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, and one thing he said stuck with me: when a comedian gets started, he tells jokes about himself and his family, because that’s what’s most easily reached. But eventually, that well runs dry, and that’s when he reaches for the next stage; and after that material (generally the experiences of travelling as a professional comic) runs dry, that’s when comedians turn to the big stuff.
So that’s what I’m hoping to accomplish here. Writing about Nintendo cheat codes or Halloween music and specials or even my fitness goals aren’t really where I ultimately want this project to be. But it’s where I need it to be right now, to get that stuff out of the way so I can reach what’s deeper inside. Because in the end, I want to tell you, my readers, the stories that are worth telling.