Do you want the short version or the long one?

Deep thoughts

This is a question I ask frequently. I find that if I am led to ask the question, most of the people asked, want the short version.

While I don’t think anyone who only wants to hear the short versions of my stories is bad, I do still find an urging to want to share more. A soul yearning, maybe. I find that we cannot make people want to be interested if they are not. People gravitate to what they want to hear, and it is not fair for me to expect differently.

I love details and I love telling stories. I don’t know if it is because I am always deeply processing things that I have so much I could say at times, or it is just the deep engrained storyteller inside of me, eager to have someone listen.

There was one day that I was at my old job, and I was in the middle of telling a big story to my boss about something that meant a lot to me (I say that, because it was definitely a story with lots of details in it). I am usually pretty animated when I get into full storyteller mode! While I was telling this big story, my boss interrupted me and said, “I think I need a commercial break!”. While in the moment it shocked me, it also put a lot into perspective for me, and then began the mindset thinking of - “Do you want the short version or the long one?” It hurt my feelings deeply in the moment, but I had to use it as a learning tool. Once I was able to process it to where it “no longer hurt my feelings”, it became a “joke” that I would use when I could tell I was starting to get long winded on a story. When I repeated his phrase back to him, my boss would get a chuckle, and I would wrap my story up quickly.

Over the years, I have gotten “better” at telling a shorter version of the stories I experience, making sure to try and hit all the highlights at least. But in deeper thinking of that, I have been slowly diminishing my storytelling abilities, sometimes feeling like no one wants to hear them, and definitely not in full detail. There always seems to be shadow work lurking somewhere. I have done so much already but it seems I am able to find more, hidden in daily life.

When I do get to talk to people that like all the details like I do, my soul feels refreshed, and I can find myself gushing. Trying to find a happy medium and I feel like this platform helps with that. Thank you. Anyone that is here, reading my words, I greatly appreciate you. I am incredibly honored for you to be on this journey with me. It is not always easy to share ourselves.