In My Opinion

It’s true that not all stories have happy endings, but anyone who says that gleefully doesn’t deserve to be telling stories in the first place.

In Good Ways And Bad

There are lots of important stories in the world, but the most important story to you personally is always the one that you tell yourself. Be it good or bad, true or false, or some mix of any or all those things, the story you tell yourself about yourself and about the world around you will influence you every day of your life.

I Think More People Should Invoke This Right

As a reader/audience member, I always reserve the right to say “And that right there is where the story ends as far as I’m concerned.”

I Got It After The Fact, But I STILL Got It

Let the record show that I, of course, got Mom’s permission to tell yesterday’s story.

But It’s Still Always For The Story

Anytime I’m doing something . . . let’s say “out of the ordinary”(1), in a back corner of my mind I find myself quietly preparing an answer should some variation of the question “Why would you do that?” ever be posed to me after the fact.  This takes less time than you might think, because the short form of my answer is always the same.  “For the story.”

The long form of my answer varies depending on the situation.

Occasionally it’s “for the story” in the sense that someday I hope to tell the tale of the time I __________.(2)  Most often it’s because I’m curious about what will happen and, come what may, I figure it’ll at least be interesting and I’ll get a good story out of it someday.(3)  These two categories easily cover 95% of all situations for me, but there is one other category, the category for when no other categories apply:

That’s when I can’t give you a logical reason at the time why I’m doing something, I just instinctively know that there’s a story out there trying to tell itself to me, and if I want to be able to tell it someday, first I have to go out and live it.(4)

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(1) I.e., something “audacious” if you want to put a positive spin on it, something “silly” (or worse) if you’re feeling less kind.

(2)  Your average “adventurous” stuff like skydiving (something I hope to never have to do, by the way) and other things done for the experience and bragging rights fall into this category.

(3)  Since I vastly prefer my stories to have some sort of happy (or at least satisfactory) ending, I tend to give a lot of pre-thought to this category.

(4)  Moving across country to be closer to some girl definitely falls into this category.  I particularly like how many stories I keep getting out of that one.