The Ten Thousand Things

[genderjumper]

New ideas for storytelling I want to develop here (as practices toward future memoiring endeavors):

A Thousand Ways to Tell a Life Story: wherein I pick some recurring element of my life and recount touchpoints. Examples include:

• karaoke
• road trips
• singing
• autism (I know flamingsword wants to see that one)
• etc.

and

A Thousand Lives to Tell a Story: building on my idea that though interesting things happen to me, my story is the least important to tell, this is just a catchy way to describe that process (and a nice counterbalance to the first idea.

Edited to add:
When I originally posted this, I was playfully referencing the Tao Te Ching with the language "ten thousand things", which I believe to be either poetically or linguistically equivalent to the English word "everything". I wanted to emphasize how many that number is by keeping "thousand" but if I really think about it, I probably only have a hundred stories to tell and I doubt more than a hundred ways, and a hundred times a hundred equals ten thousand, so it feels more elegant if I rename those projects "A Hundred Lives" and "A Hundred Ways". -- 2026.05.30

Comments

[sabethea]

I like both those ideas, but especially the second. I’d like to think of my own life in those terms, through the people I’ve met and stories about them - and me, by the wayside. I think that’s a fascinating way t look at one’s own life.

[genderjumper]

It's central to how I view humanity, but it does come with the quandary of whose stories we can or cannot tell. I personally loved the Oral History of Prince I read last year, but the purple one himself would probably take issue with the who and how for the project as it took place. Others can know us better than we know ourselves and simplify patterns that don't always reach our perception.

Maybe it's not storytelling that is the problem, there, but the sense of ownership. I think about this a lot.

[sabethea]

Yes, very true: what is our story to tell, and to what degree? A friend was asked to sign a disclaimer for a book written by someone we went to school with and whom she dated, because it referenced her; she refused, because the reference was not correct and didn’t sum up their relationship from her pov, though it was so small she pointed out she wouldn’t do anything if he published it. She just wouldn’t sign something which seemed to agree that it was an acceptable description of her because to her it wasn’t.

[genderjumper]

I think about this a lot. There are a lot of my stories I cannot tell without some level of approval from people who aren't really talking to me at this point.

[flamingsword]

You’re not wrong but not entirely right either - I want to read all of the GJ thoughts! What makes you you? When do I get the Bildungsroman of your oppressed childhood?

[genderjumper]

You know just how to motivate me!

I'm so much more enthusiastic about writing something for an audience (even an audience of one) than I am just for myself!

[sabethea]

Audience of two!