For years I’ve tried to think about something interesting to write about, but when I started to question who I was writing for, I realized that the most common answer was: me. Every morning I sit down to write morning pages (750 words, stream-of-consciousness style) and it’s the most fun I have whilst writing. There’s no pressure, it doesn’t need to fit some theme, and I can keep trying to find my voice without judgement.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to care less about judgement—and I like to think that I’ve started to judge less, too. I’ve increasingly found joy in simple stories, and I’ve learned to disconnect the idea of “value” from “is interesting to a large number of people” and “makes money”. Maybe I was slow to do that, but once you have the world changes entirely. Everyone, it turns out, is endlessly fascinating.
I spent so long listening to the stories of folks who I find very impressive that I almost forgot about the wonderful stories that you can hear just by meeting someone—anyone—new, from some place that you’re not, from some background you don’t share. You feel it when you crack up listening to The Moth, and when you’re wiping away a tear (okay, many tears) during act three of This American Life.
It’s so easy to fill our ears and brains with the stories and thoughts of others, and easier still to make our own thoughts and our own voice more quiet—until it’s barely a whisper. What would you feel, though, if you wrote down everything that you can remember from your childhood? What heart-warming or tear-inducing story have you almost forgotten? I promise you that someone wants to hear it.
The stories that we queue up in our podcast app; that we stream back-to-back on Netflix—they’re interesting, but they’re not the only interesting stories. They’re likely not even the most interesting stories, at least not to everyone. I want to hear your story, and I hope that you’ll share it. Maybe just with yourself at first, and then maybe, slowly, with the internet—or at least with a friend.
If you write and share your story, I promise you that I’ll read it. Publish it and send me the link. Send it right to my email inbox, if you’d prefer. Speak it quietly (or loudly) to a friend, or a group of friends. Tell it how you want to tell it. Mess it up. Start over. Pause to laugh (or to cry). Even if it’s just for a day, pause the story that you were about to listen to and tell your own instead. I’d like to hear it.