For me its fun to tell stories. When I tell stories, people laugh, or groan, or shake their heads, but they get to know me a bit better and, sometimes, they tell their own stories, and I get to know them.

     I suppose it matters little whether the stories are stictly true or accurate; the telling is enough to give you a context and connection point to the listeners. It's been a long time since most of us lived and worked with people we grew up with... in fact, most of us grew up in so many places with so many people that without telling stories, we'll never know each other. (Also, people with my type of memory need to tell stories to remember ourselves.)

     So, I guess I tell stories to connect and have a context!

     I like being the center of attention, and I like seeing people laugh so hard they can't breath. I also like growing to know people and their paths and families, and having them know mine.

     Some of the stories are more than a little edgy, so it's scary to share them in books or online. Face to face, speaking a story, you get to be with a person's reactions in real time and adjust the telling accordingly. Each time the story is retold, it's a little different, and I learn from each telling.

     Publishing stories means freezing the story at a single point in time, in exchange for a chance for being known and possibly liked (or not), possibly get paid enough to make a living, and possibly living with fewer secrets. I'm wondering if that's really a good trade.