Areas of Unrest

17 July 2005 - Oklahoma!

Work is extremely stressful right now. Without going into details, I've been characterizing some potential decisions as people competing to be the first lemming off the cliff. And, yes, I know that Disney faked the whole lemming thing, but it's still a popular metaphor. I've also applied for another job, but I only give myself a 10-20% chance of getting it and I don't want to jinx things by saying more right now.

I'm also stressed out over Robert, which is, I suppose, another "so what else is new?" Twenty years, damn it.

All of this stress didn't really improve my experience going to the National Storytelling Conference in Oklahoma City. The conference was fine, but I had expected to feel more energized, instead of ending up exhausted. In addition, several of the workshops were too long for the time they had alloted. If you're trying to do an eight hour workshop in 90 minutes, you need to make decisions, folks. The definite highlight was the Saturday morning session, which had four tellers performing versions of the same story, showing how they made different choices with the source material (which was "Beauty and the Beast," by the way). Milbre Burch had a fascinating twist on the story, having to do with self-image, with Beauty believing she is Beast. The other highlight was seeing and chatting with people I haven't seen in a long time and meeting new people and the general hanging out with storytellers thing. This conference was less conducive to that in some ways, though, because the layout of the convention center didn't leave natural gathering places. Finally, I found the story swap themes to be completely uninspiring. Adult stories, history stories, open swap - where's the inspiration there? I like themes to be stuff like "Planes, Trains and Flying Carpets: Stories About the Journey." (I chose that example because it was the theme for a swap I moderated at a previous conference.) What about something like "Stories You Wouldn't Tell Your Mother" or "Red-faced or Red-Handed"?

I also made time to do a Volksmarch, skipping out on a session where I was lukewarm towards all the workshop topics to do so. The state capital is unique for having an oil well on its grounds and there's an area of very nice houses / mansions, including one interesting art deco one with an omega-shaped door. But, overall, the main thing I noticed was how few other people were out walking anywhere. In fact, the only places I really saw other people out at all were the National Memorial (which commemorates the bombing 10 years ago and is a very moving site) and Bricktown, which is mostly a restaurant and bar district, but is more significant to me for having a minor league ballpark and streets named after Mickey Mantle and Johnny Bench.