I like telling stories

As I was coming home from work today I was musing on Caity’s blog post where she mentions why she reads other people’s blogs, as well as Melissa’s post about Twitter, and how I realised I only twitter (or tweet?) for myself. And then I realised that I’ve left behind the times where I blogged for comments, or for other people’s interest. I blog purely for myself now, and don’t care about the few hits or subscriptions I get. This led me onto the question: why do I want to blog?

The answer is quite simple and came to me quickly. As I was thinking all this, I was thinking about a comment I got on my livejournal today where I was told that they like the way I write reviews (thanks Sorakaji!).  I like writing reviews because I like to share the story of how I felt, and I want to involve other people in that. I was also thinking about previous blogs of Caity’s,¹ in particular one where she did a meme called “The Fifth Photo.” I was thinking that I would like to do that, because I wanted to share the stories behind my photos, of which I have a lot, all with different stories.

Then it came to me. I blog because I want to tell stories; I love telling stories. Usually on here it’s simply what I did today, but you will notice that even on the most abstract of posts where I think about the meaning of life, I have to put in somewhere what I did that day, or what I was doing when the thought popped into my head.

I’m the same offline. I love telling stories so much that often when trying to tell friends something, I will get so sidetracked by one story relating to the issue that I end up in a completely different place, and they have no idea what my original point was. Last year whilst on the coach to Tuscany, I sat next to my friend who had missed the season finale of Doctor Who, so I spent the entire journey from London to Calais relating the story to her in detail. (We happened to be sitting behind one of my music teachers, who awarded me an “encyclopaedic knowledge of Doctor Who” award at the end of the tour!) On my camp at Colwyn Bay this year, the two friends I was sharing a room with used to ask me every night to tell them what I’d done that day, simply because I was a “good storyteller” and would tell them something exciting.

I LOVE telling stories.

After this revelation, two ideas came into my head. The first being tell more stories. Wow, great idea of the year. What I propose to do is ask you people to ask me a question. This is not supposed to be a regular “ask me anything” post, although you can ask me anything. Just ask me something, and I will tell you the story about it. Even if I don’t have an answer, I can still tell you a story about something to do with it, I promise. This is going to be an ongoing thing, so leave questions on every blog post I do. I might set up a form or something if the idea takes off.

The second idea is that I’m going to do something similar to the “fifth photo” meme every Friday (at the risk of sounding trendy/gay I’m calling it Photo Friday), where I choose a photo at random and tell you the story behind it. If you like, you can choose the photo, eg. third photo in your sixth folder, or something.

I realise that this is going to turn my blog more personal than ever, but hey, like I said. I like it like that.

Note: I will still be pondering the meaning of life in some blog entries.

1. yes, I think about blogs a lot; congratulations Caity, yours gets mentioned! [↩]

Tags: blogs, Doctor Who, friends, me, Review, story, symphonic