Member-only story
Experience is not a Story
I’ve written hundreds of articles online, endless tomes of confusion about myself and my position in life.
Mostly in the professional confessional category.
Yet, what’s my story?
My work is a never ending arc.
It begins with a rising feeling of something important to me.
This creates the foundations of a story.
Things that happened to me, or the way I feel about life today.
That’s where the story ends, my experience just drops off a cliff, or feelings are left, hanging in the air.
Stories are more than that, they are beginnings, middles and ends. A story is about something that happened, what effect it had and then what changed afterwards. The experience, how it felt and how it changed me.
Without all three parts, especially the last, it’s not a story, it’s just a confession.
It’s easy to make the last part a lesson, rather than an experience.
The last part needs to be vulnerable.
It’s the final admission of learning, of recognising the fallibility and growth of the human mind.
All these years, I’ve not been writing stories, they’ve been lessons, based on an experience.
