Monday, May 2, 2011

Storytelling and Facebook Pacts

I've made a pact with Shane to use facebook just for one hour during this week. If one of us goes over the limit, they have to buy the other a milkshake. This is actually REALLY helping me, so let's hope it keeps working. 'Cause, really - that's ten minutes a day for six days, or 20 minutes on 3 days. Honestly, that's enough.

This is important for the musics to happen because if I'm on facebook, I'm not practicing. When I divert time from facebook, it usually goes into practice.




No huge music updates. I set some new goals for the summer. The one I'm most excited about is the storytelling thing. I've secretly wanted to be a storyteller for years. Technically, I did prepare and tell stories around a campfire at Halloween last year, so I suppose I can technically say that I am, but I haven't made any more moves on any more stories since. But, man - that was so awesome. I had a small but wonderful audience and they thoroughly enjoyed the stories. I picked stories that were not too scary, but mostly spooky and funny.

I've been told you need a niche to survive as a storyteller - a focus. I was discouraged by this for awhile, but the answer should have been completely obvious - I'd be nature-focused. Duh. So I actually put a "Wild Tales & Tunes Campfire" on the schedule for a Saturday evening in August for Lums Pond. If all goes well, I think it'll serve as a nice launching point for incorporating more storytelling into what I do. If it flops, it flops.

Obviously, I don't actually think it will flop - otherwise, I wouldn't have planned it - but you can't know these things unless you try. I just think it would be incredibly lame to arrive at the end of my life and find myself thinking about all the stuff I didn't do because I just didn't try. I don't want to wonder how it could have turned out.

Mary Oliver says it best in this excerpt from "When Death Comes":

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

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