storytelling

october and november were grueling months for me. basically, i did not leave work prior to 6:00PM for two whole months. add to that a lot of travel time and the encroaching darkness of these shortened days and you have one "crabby patty," as we say in our family.

on the upside, i got to see my godson and his glorious family, my lovely friend tiffany, the lincoln memorial, and one of the smithsonian's. those highlights were fantastic, but overall i've felt pretty dark.

one of the pieces that has been missing from my life is a good book. (to those of you that don't read voraciously i can imagine that last sentence sounds like a pathetically lame complaint, but i know the readers out there can relate.) i need another world to delve into each night--a story to get lost in--otherwise i find myself bumbling and fumbling through the real world with a nasty attitude. i've begun reading an anne lamott work of fiction and that has bouyed me, but it isn't fantastic. (btw, any suggestions for a fabulous work of fiction that is not mythology or fantasy?)

i've been dwelling a lot on the idea of stories. i think part of why i came into social work is that i enjoy hearing people's stories. when i meet couples i want to learn how they came to be. i love hearing birthing stories (although they do scare me a wee bit sometimes). when i work with people at the hospital it is natural for me to find out far more about their life in a matter of minutes than other care providers find out in weeks of taking care of them. when i think of people i treasure in my life part of the thing i admire most about each of them is the way they tell stories and see connections. 

brandon and i recently discovered a major difference between us: i can't listen to music without listening to lyrics and dwelling on these stories; he has to be quite intentional about hearing the words because generally he finds music to just be about the sounds. in other words, he sees the vast forrest while i see the detailed bark on the trees. i think this is why music has never been soothing to me when i am in a dark place. a lot of music is melancholy storytelling and i get drawn in; i can't not hear the stories, as much as i try. so in the past few months of stress and chaos i have come to discover that music can sooth me--provided i have no clue what the words are. my solution: hawaiian music. my hawaiian radio pandora station has seen a lot of play time lately. 

so there is this strange push and pull: i need a good story at the end of the day, in fact i love stories, but i can't always handle hearing them because of my intense investment.

these are just some random thoughts rolling around in my head, but i thought i would share my small solution in hopes of it helping someone else. mahalo and aloha...