Storytelling

Sometimes I feel like being a journalist means I get to experience the things that other people do without actually doing them myself.

I can't decide if this is a good thing or not.

I interviewed an actress today.  Secretly, I've always wanted to act.  You know how you have those plans that you will never follow through with, but you know that if you could do anything in the world, you would do x?  I've always thought acting in plays is like that thing for me.

So I was excited to interview this actress.  And in talking with her and listening to the fluctuation of her voice and the way she spoke in hushed tones about becoming her character when she is on stage, I imagined myself in her shoes.  For that eighteen-and-a-half minute interview, I personified myself as an actress.

And then I came home and wrote the story.  And turned back into the storyteller I am inside.

Does that mean that a good storyteller puts on different hats in order to tell the best story possible 

Maybe not.  But I think that's what I'm finding myself doing.

Maybe it's hard to see anything negative about this.  But at times, especially the past month or so, I've found myself backing out of activities and living (in certain ways) because I have to interview someone or write a story or whatever.  And while I am talking to them or writing their story, I feel like a part of something huge, even if it's just talking to an actress who shaved her head for a play or a lonesome man who drives a trolley.

But sometimes when I'm done writing the story or talking to them or I put away my storytelling pen, I am reminded that I forgo certain aspects of life in order to tell others' stories.  I have at times put aside my own life in order to tell someone else's.

Is that sane?