Tuesday, June 4, 2013

The uninteresting stories we don't tell

There are times when I feel I have nothing to tell. No stories, no jokes, no things. I'm just a collection of known factors, old jokes and unoriginal retweets.

Then I think back on all the crazy stunts I've pulled.

Like that time when I, on a whim, decided to take the sixteen hour long haul night train from the south of Sweden to the far north of it. Without bothering to arrange anything in the way of tickets, on a full train where everyone either had a reserved seat or no seat at all.

And got away with it. All the way.

Or that time when I went to Brussels, and some sort of snafu left me alone out on the lukewarm city streets all night, without anywhere to sleep, go or phone. When I roamed the streets and saw the nocturnal sights until I found a convenient but oh so cold hiding hole to await the morning in.

The morning in which I took an exhausted emergency nap in the office of Teirdes. Inside the European Parliament.

Or that time when I had a brand new bike, a brand new month of time off, and the brand new thought that:"hey, Stockholm is just 200 kilometers from here, let's go there! On the bike!"

And the day after I arrived, when I slept, ate, turned the bike around and went home again.

There are times when I feel I have nothing to tell. Then I think back, and give myself a very self-centered mental slap.

It is easy to get too close to oneself, and to forget that things are not as familiar to others as one is to the one self that was there. That the tired old same old is brand new to those who have not heard it before.

There's a lot of uninteresting stories we don't tell.