Love Stories (Loving Stories, Not Stories of Love)

I love stories. Fiction, non-fiction, half-truths, personal experiences, second-hand accounts, tales of others from my hairdresser, news, journalism, gossip, you name it -- I love hearing about other people's lives and how they unfold.

This is not profound. I feel silly even writing it -- except it's true. And while I do my best not to gossip, I find myself analyzing my friends' lives because I love them and their lives are interesting to me. I'm invested. More than that, I'm simply invested in people's lives. I love stories about anything and they never get old. I love books and reading and I've been doing that since I can remember. I love music and how it tells a story and it's meaningful beyond the notes on the page, even when there are no words beyond the notes on the page.

I have degrees in English and Journalism, two fields that record the stories of peoples' lives. My hobbies include reading, writing, photography, collecting quotations -- all things that catalog life and stories. One of my favorite blogs is Our Labor of Love, a blog of a photographer that does mostly weddings but also other photography engagements. I love looking at everyone's unique wedding story. They're all the same and yet somehow very different.

I adore movies -- every kind, with the possible exception of horror and gross scary movies that are more about creative ways to kill people slowly or grotesquely than anything to do with a movie. I love documentaries and reality television (real reality television, not I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

Six months ago and I started aggressively listening to This American Life, which is a Chicago radio station (it's like I knew I'd be moving here) that offers stories of people once a week in a strange mix that all fit together into a strange sort of common link. It's difficult to explain, but amazing stories ensue.

I always love the backstory to everything -- like discovering WHY Chicago is such an architectural gem. When the city burned down in 1871, they invited all the architects of the country (perhaps the world) to come and rebuild it. Though the fire was devastating, it allowed Chicago to be what it is today, both in the Downtown area and all the neighborhoods surrounding it (read: not suburbs, but neighborhoods. All part of actual Chicago). It feels very planned and it is. Now if only Atlanta's burning down and reconstruction had been so successful.... I love it but I mean, let's be honest, there's hardly a grid system in much of the city and 12 streets named Peachtree? Seriously.

But I love that Atlanta has the story. People say it's not the same as other cities -- and it isn't. It doesn't have that same city feel. It's too sprawling, it's not laid out quite right, there are no seamless neighborhoods like Chicago, there is laughingly public transportation and thus a city where everyone drives, it's filled now with chain restaurants that have replaced local gems, and somehow it doesn't work to live in a lot of it, as the grocery stores and living amenities are all in some places while businesses are all in others. There is some small mixture but that sense of community can often be lacking. And thus the endless miles of suburbs. But I love it. It WAS home to me. I loved that I could go to any music concert I wanted and had easy access 15 minutes down the road. Endless restaurants, culture, music, movies, festivals, whatever -- it's an interesting center in the south for all things coming through. So you get that big city feel without actually having a proper big city -- but it works. So no, it can't really compare with New York or Chicago or Los Angles or San Francisco or Houston or Boston, or any of these other unique cities with so much history and architecture. When our city burned down, we were in the midst of actual civil war reconstruction and we were not left to our devices to rebuild, stuck for years in the process of rejoining the union. Even though I don't really understand the clinging to the past, it's no wonder that civil war history remains every day in the lives of all the people who remember and talk about it and reenact it. It shaped Atlanta as it is today. It seems to me to be one of the great reasons why our city is different. It's the strange red-headed stepchild to all the other big cities of America.

Having felt a little different, a little outside everyone else for much of my life, I can relate. That's why it's my city. Things change, however, and who knows what I'll say in five years, assuming I'm still living in this gigantic city called Chicago. Maybe I'll think of it as mine one of these days.

But the point is, I love stories. I write because I love stories. I'll always have to do something with stories. Everone loves music and movies and reading. Is it as simple as some people like to read and others like to lose themselves in movies and others like the way notes sound when put together? Or do we all just love stories?