Welcome to Long Story Short
Honestly, this is probably my fourth attempt to find my stride in the blogosphere. My first attempt in grad school was called “A Myriad of Musings,” where I just wrote my thoughts about whatever topic I wanted. At 23, I hoped (or Lord help me, assumed) people cared what I thought about random bits of whatever. Turns out, my readership wasn’t as vast as my ego wished. (But thanks again for reading everything, Mom and Dad.)
Over the last ten years, I’ve tried to reinvent the blog, with various levels of success and equally various levels of effort. My last attempt was a couple of years ago when I wrote to my subscriber list pledging a regular newsletter of updates on my personal life. But as it happens, I was probably less interested in that than anyone. So I only wrote one.
But this time is going to be different. Why? Because I finally have clarity. I know what I have to offer, and more importantly, I know what problem I can help you solve.
Here’s my hunch: You, like most people I have met, would like to improve your knowledge of and skill at telling good stories and navigating conflict. The reason I believe this is because these two things are guaranteed in human life. We have to tell stories to make sense of our world, and we deal with conflicts all the time—whether with others or within ourselves. And most people I meet want to be better at both.
“We have to tell stories to make sense of our world, and we deal with conflicts all the time. Most people want to be better at both.”
And as it happens, that’s exactly what I do for a living. I’m a storytelling and conflict resolution consultant. I spend my time helping individuals, groups, and organizations learn
how to find, craft, and tell their most meaningful stories, and
how to transform conflicts into opportunities rather than obstacles.
So that’s what I’m going to offer you in this weekly newsletter. My goal is to tell you everything I know (or at least everything I am willing to type) about storytelling and conflict. Most of it will be about stories, as that is the primary request from the organizations that hire me, and it’s what I know the most about really—despite having a master’s in conflict resolution. Almost all my professional life has hovered around storytelling—from story banking, to using story circles for empathy-building, to live storytelling, to classroom education and workshops on storytelling, to story-gathering projects, to book writing, etc. I like to think I’ve collected some useful learning over the years.
And now I’m going to share it—for free. It will come to you on Tuesdays. Read the ones that interest you; skip the ones that don’t. Nice and easy.
I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for being here.
P.S. If you want to know more about my qualifications and background, have a read of the About page on my website.
