After reading through most of Allie Brosh’s “Hyperbole and a Half” blog the other day, I contemplated writing a blog. Sarah is writing a reading blog called “Loving Books” and that’s going well, and she also had a cooking blog with her roommates during the school year documenting their apartment cooking escapades.
I thought about the kinds of things people generally write successful blogs about: everyday life/stories from their past, or a specific thing that they dedicate their blog to. I emphatically dabble in lots of interests, so it would be hard for me to, say, write a Classical music blog and not every once in a while express my love for all things Arrested Development.
As pertains to the second option, writing about real life experiences, you can just ask some of my friends: I am mostly terrible at storytelling. This is in part due to my need to slow down what I’m saying so I can think it through while I say it (resulting in lots of low-pitched “ums” and “uhhs” and “likes”), but also because a story is generally more entertaining to me than it is to everyone else, and I just have such high hopes for it that it doesn’t climax so much as it plummets back to where it started. Imagine if you were riding the Millenium Force at Cedar Point, and when you are almost at the top you are anticipating that stomach flip of weightlessness you get at the top, and instead of reaching that point the entire ride just shifts its angle and is now flat, and you are greeted by bored teenagers who escort you off the platform.
That is what hearing a story from me is like.
And see there? Someone else could probably give a much more entertaining metaphor for my storytelling .
So that same day I thought to myself, “Kirsten, you are terrible at stories. Who is great at stories?” I texted my cousin Kelli and said, “You should write a blog,” which apparently was the final motivation she needed to actually do it! That night she started Bagels n Sox, and I am super excited to watch it progress.
That whole time I was thinking about starting a blog, but I was plagued by the notion that I am a horribly uninteresting teller of tales. Then I thought, “Hey, I can start a blog if I want. My excuse can be that it will help me with my writing, so it doesn’t continue to devolve into one-syllable words and internet slang.”
So there it is.
What’s that? You’re wondering about the title of this blog? Listen to me tell you a story and try not to say that to me at the end of it. You will probably have an aneurysm.
