My Story

Something to note about me. I love to read. I read ALL OF THE TIME. One of the nice things about not being in school anymore is that I have more opportunities to read the books that I want to read, vs. the ones that my teachers or professors tell me to read. Beyond the fiction books I read there are a few authors that I absolutely LOVE. They are my reference people and I feel as though I can trust the books they have written. When I buy one of their books I am confident that they will not disappoint me. I also need to actually buy these books usually because I end up making notes in them and highlighting and underlining all over them. These authors are: Rob Bell , Brian McLaren,  Brennan Manning, Donald Miller, and  Shane Claiborne. These are my references. When I feel like I need to be inspired for something, I usually turn to these guys. I wish that someday I could have them all meet together in a room and I could pick their brains. It would be incredibly interesting, they would have fantastic stories to tell, and we would probably laugh a lot. 


So if you are reading this blog, I'm probably going to reference these authors a lot. (Along with some fiction writers too, but I won't have you worry about them right now.)


Yesterday I picked up Donald Millers new book called A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and I'm about halfway through it. (I really really fast by the way.) What he's talking about in this book is living out a story, your life story. Some movie guys came up to Don and said that they wanted to make a movie out of his book Blue Like Jazz. While creating the screenplay for the movie Don realizes that his life is actually too boring to be a movie. So he has to create new things for the plot so that it can translate to the movie screen from the book. Through this process he realizes that he is not living a good story.



I'm all about stories. When I was a kid all I wanted to do was write stories. I thought that one day I was going to be a famous author one day. I still write pretty often. For the last 2 years I've been participating in National Novel Writing Month (NANOWRIMO) in November where you have to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days, and in December I opened up an account on FictionPress.com to publish my writing. I also love theatre, which is telling stories. Now I'm starting this blog. I guess you could say is that all I do is tell stories. I love stories. 


Sometimes I wonder what my life story is. Is it interesting? When I think about it... probably not. It has its moments where I enjoy it, but then again I'm easily amused. However, if someone else were to look at my life would they be just as amused? Would they smile? Would my heartbreaks be their heartbreaks? I'm not sure. When I look back at my life years from now, will I be able to say that I had a good story? Or even the parts that were interesting, will I be able to remember them? 


So I've been thinking about these things as I read. It makes me want to do something. I'm not sure what though. I don't have any long lost relatives, which is a good thing, but searching for a family member that I've never met is out unless it's some random 6th cousin or something. It's also not like I'm one of the disciples and Jesus walks up to me and tells me to leave everything and follow him. At least not right now. I don't think. But who knows, maybe he is and I'm not listening. I can be kinda dense sometimes. 


But what makes a good story? One thing that Don mentions at the beginning of his book is that he has a friend who writes down everything he remembers. How cool is that? I think that would be fun to write down everything I remember when it pops into my head. 


So what are your stories? What is your life story? Do you think you're living a good one? If you don't think you are leading a good story, what's stopping you from making it better? I'm curious to hear what other people have to say about this.