Anecdotes

I suppose that it goes without saying that the most crucial ability of any storyteller at all is the ability to keep his or her listeners (or readers) hooked.

There’s this really neat trick that some people do where they interweave stories into one another, usually a less important one nestled within one that’s supposed to be substantial. They’ll start off a story about how they can’t find there dog with an irrelevant yarn about how their uncle got drunk and totally ruined the family reunion last year. One writer started off a story about how she couldn’t “find herself” with a story about Where’s Waldo. Family guy does this all the time, and Holy Toledo, I’m doing it right now.

Provided that they’re not all embellishing or liars, there seem to be in this world a fair number of individuals who have stories, real live flesh and blood stories from their own actual lives, for almost all occasions. Having a chat about linear perspective? Roger Storyman will tell you a tale of how his great-great-great-great-great grandfather painted with Brunelleschi. Interested in spaceships? Roger Storyman visited the moon LAST WEEK. Roger Storyman has a lot of life experience under his belt.

I want to be like Roger Storyman when I grow up, sans the being entirely fictitious part. I want to do things and meet people, and maybe even go to outer space or Texas or something if the opportunity is ever made or comes. I want to be like Roger Storyman, but not because I care about visiting outer space or Texas, but because I want to say that I am and that I did. I just want to be able to show off, contextually to others through the lovely anecdotes I’ll gain, and constantly to myself.

And that sort of baffles me. I want to be that kind of person, but only so I can show off to others? Pretty lame. In fact, it’s super lame. But the fact that I approach tasks as substantial as becoming an astronaut from such a direction amuses me. It seems really novel. If someone else were to express these sentiments to me, I’d laugh and then tell them that they were adorable, in a dumb and childish way at least.

But even though the notion amuses me, I don’t approve of it. In trying to impress these other folks, I earn my own disapproval along with the disapproval of people who probably feel the same way that I do. But at the same time, if I’m not doing anything, if I’m not “bettering” myself in a way that is typically seen as “bettering,” I feel just as bad. Cognitive dissonance is coming at me from all angles and by golly, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to hide.

I suppose that the only way to break the ouroboros is by changing the way I think. But here’s where all this ambivalence becomes a pain. More than anything else, I suppose that I’m really most concerned with doing what is right. Not excluding myself, I think that means following one person or another. But I don’t really know who to follow, because I really can’t tell who’s right or wrong. Should I try and make the most out of all my potential or should I just do the things that I feel like doing? What if I feel like making the most out of my potential, but I don’t feel like studying biology because I think it's boring? If one of my wants comes to fruition, it will preclude the other. I have this nice piece of cake with me and I want to eat it, but I want to save it for tomorrow too. This is so super lame.

Ah, this was my first try at a blog entry. I wonder if any one will read it?