It’s a chilly, blustery day outside. The clouds have been swept from the sky and the bare tree branches make quite a din every few minutes in the stiff breeze. I think it will be a great night for stargazing…if I could only find a spot somewhere around Jordan Lake where I can make clear, uninterrupted observations.<\/p>\n
My comments and stories rarely have funny or interesting conclusions, deep insights, or points, for that matter. Storytelling as a conversational practice was something I realized was commonplace only in my later years of high school, and it was never something any of the members of my family engaged in, at least not to the point where I noticed it growing up. Oftentimes I’ll be listening to a friend telling a story, and while I realize that the event being described may not have been extraordinary or even really noteworthy, their manner of relating the event makes it seem exciting. Gestures, eye contact, tone of voice, and emphasis on words and pauses all make the difference. I feel like half the time when I’m describing a really interesting event, I tell it such a way that it seems even less interesting than it should be… It’s like I shoot my stories in the foot inadvertently. It’s a skill that I’ve tried to consciously develop, but for years I thought that extraordinary experiences (not many of which occur to me) were the key to good stories, and I’ve had a hunch lately that the draw is more in the telling itself than the actual event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s a chilly, blustery day outside. The clouds have been swept from the sky and the bare tree branches make quite a din every few minutes in the stiff breeze. I think it will be a great night for stargazing…if I could only find a spot somewhere around Jordan Lake where I can make clear, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}