Is it Really Storytime?

[qos]

I've said, I've written, I've thought. . . that I am searching for stories, for new stories, for meaningful stories. . .

But maybe it's time now to release not just my old stories but stories themselves, and storytelling as a way of life.

Maybe it's time to stop telling stories to myself and start planning and doing instead: to plan and engage in adventure instead of just dreaming about adventures; to act and become my desired self instead of just writing about a person I am convinced could never exist in this world.

There's more risk, of course -- but I may have finally come to the place in my life where I am ready to believe that it's only in risk that we grow. That I can grow.

I want to be more than I am.
There is nothing stopping me but me.

Comments

[a-belletrist.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's not an/either or, but a both/and.

Stories, those we listen to, read, and tell or write are roadmaps. They're the places we want to go to, the people we want to be, and they cup possibility like water for us to sip.

They are the gestational us, the newly fathomed and dearly held aspects that we don't yet have the courage or energy or ability to put on. They are our trial selves, as we seek what new skin will fit us. They are the signposts and the new vistas we couldn't imagine for ourselves until the storyteller (ourself or another) brought our conscious minds the potential.

Yes. Become the You you want to be. Try on the new coat and see how it fits, remembering sometimes it takes a while for new things to become soft and supple and ours. But, at the same time, hold the stories to you dearly, for they are pieces of you as well, even if their manifestation is currently only in words, and not in action.

Be gentle with both yourself and them. Walk forward on your path, and see who manifests ... whose energy wants to manifest, and then you will understand the YOU, the living heroine you already are.

You can have both. You already have both. It's an unfolding and an emerging ... and it's simply time now to enjoy the next chapter.


-- Brought to you by someone who can't truly imagine a life without stories, and who understands that this viewpoint isn't for everyone.

[qos.livejournal.com]

"Both/and" has always been hard for me -- a side effect, I believe, of being aligned with Swords. My tendency is to want to make neat, decisive distinctions. Even as I acknowledge the beauty and power of mystery, ambiguity and paradox.

I love stories. I've been writing since I was very young, and it's always been my primary form of self-expression. I've spent most of my life using stories just as you describe above: exploring possibilities, speaking possible selves.

But I believe that my everyday life has suffered from the amount of energy I've put into developing my stories at the expense of real life. If I feel now that it's time to set aside stories for a while, it's because I've not done the both/and very well in the past and I need to redress a balance.

I'll never set aside stories for good, but for right now I need to look at the energy of the stories, the impulses, and see how to make them real, not hide behind the safety of my pen on paper and thus fail to become the person I've told stories about.