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

[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.