What Is StoryShed?

StoryShed’s mission is to explore the boundaries of personal history (both yours and mine) through creativity, writing, and reflection.

And then more creativity, writing, and reflection.

Each season (four episodes in 1-2 months, depending on the subject), I’ll send out an essay on each of the three traits: Daytalking, Nightwalking, or Stargazing, where we’ll get to work through the traits in more detail together and grow our Substack community.

By building our community, we can further our lives more than we ever could do alone. I hope you’ll join us.

Why StoryShed? Why now?

Since I’ve started this Substack, it’s been a boon—in fact, I mentioned to a friend that it’s been the most personally absorbing project I’ve started in a long time. And there’s a reason for that: it hits all my buttons.

Daytalking, delving into the mysteries of relationships and belonging; Nightwalking, involving honesty about shortcomings, failures, or setbacks; and Stargazing—probably the first love of my life, which has always seen me through and will continue to do so: curiosity.

A triad that’s been something akin to the key to my soul.

But I can’t do it alone. Oh, no.

I need you. Every one of you.

All your experiences, your talents, your energy—they augment the process. I have to admit it is more than a little scary to begin something like this with no set endpoint (although it’s not so much of a problem as it is an opportunity, if for nothing else but exploration and amusement), but all the work I alone might put into it is only so much and no more.

Like you, I’m just a human.

But imagine we amp it up: humans times ten, a hundred, a thousand—a million, can do more together than they can alone. There are two sides to the present situation—by which I don’t mean politics but behavior—how you use the internet and its connected social media. We can doomscroll, feel anxious about the future, bitterly rue the past, Wordle ourselves silly about the present, drop in on social media and get all feisty and frothy over the chatter du jour.

In short, become cynical and check out.

OR.

Or … we can reinvent ourselves, work at a goal based on shared resources, skills, and experiences. Show up for each other with hope and kindness and generosity.

And even if we’re not at our best, we can help pick each other up until we’re on the road again toward our ideal selves. Where we check in.

I like this last option a lot.

Thank you for subscribing. And welcome.