Stories are My Thing

This is me.

On Monday's episode of the podcast, Amanda and I had a great conversation surrounding the idea of what's your thing'. It was absolutely my favorite episode yet. I think the places that our convo got were deep and meaningful and absolutely hilarious at times.

I spent some time talking about the difference in the space between my thing as a public person and my things in my personal life, and I wanted to expand on that a little bit more here today.

Publically, I'm rukristin: Feminist Scrapbooker, and I show that personality off to people on Instagram, here on my blog, in my writing, and it's the voice that shows up a lot in my art and scrapbooking in general. It's a personality I've been cultivating for more than a dozen years online and in-person.

It's a huge part of my life and I love everything about who I am as rukristin: Feminist Scrapbooker. It's an authentic part of who I am as a person, but it is just a part of the whole.

In my personal life, just like everyone, else I'm a whole complicated mess of a person.

My name is Kristin, but I feel like I only hear that when I'm in trouble, or if I'm in a formal situation. Most of the time, I'm whatever name you and I have mutually decided on, it's different for a lot of people.

I'm a lover of excellent television, and if we chat, I'll almost definitely recommend you watch a TV show.

One of my most recent things has become growing vegetables -- I go in depth about this one on the podcast.

I have a special passion for cooking and throwing dinner parties (making food for people is my love language).

I'm a die-hard, conflicted fan of the National Football League (I'm waiting all day for Sunday Night; I hate myself for loving you).

I also really love playing video and board games (I talk a bunch about this one on the upcoming podcast episode).

I'm in a love/hate relationship with my need to read and analyze political theory and current events.

And honestly, one of my favorite things is being a wonderful and kind introverted friend; and these are the relationships that I want to cultivate this year.

What do all of these things have in common? Stories. Everything in my life comes back to stories.

Stories are my thing.

Stories are what make my world go 'round. Everything in both my personal, public, private, and professional lives all converge around storytelling. Stories are my passion. And knowing that makes it easier to see where everything fits into my life, and fit so many things into my life.

Because I love stories so much, I'm able to bring so much richness to my life. I'm lucky enough to be able to do this through so many different mediums because I look at them through the lens of storytelling. TV, sports, veggies, politics -- I get to look at these critically because I'm looking at them through a storytelling lens, because they have stories at their heart and soul, just like I do.