Too Many Stories

I’ve been spending a lot of time on social media recently. Which sounds a little funny, as I am just resuming writing this blog after so much time away. The thing is, I haven’t been writing on social media, beyond assorted “congratulations” and “happy birthday” posts. I have been reading. Those several-sentence posts and one-minute stories can transport you a long way in a short time.

The problem is, those several sentence posts and one-minute stories can also convince you that your own story, in life or in print, is way short of good enough. Read an account of someone else being headhunted for a job, and you begin to wonder why no one’s looking for you. Inhale multiple posts about the exciting phone calls other people received, and you begin to wonder why your own handheld device is deafeningly silent. Skim through a tale of success, or excitement, or heroics, and you begin to wonder why you don’t feel like the hero OR the person being saved. Obviously, there are much longer stories behind the short ones. And often, our own stories are far more exciting than we give them credit for when we are reading other people’s. But sometimes, there are just too many stories. And instead of treading water in other people’s, we might do better to immerse ourselves in our own.

We can’t always compete with the “being wanted” and “being celebrated” and “being extraordinary” that social media stories are so good at thrusting in our face. But we can write—and live—a story for ourselves that keeps us on the edge of our seat, and, if we stick with it, has just as exciting an ending.