Never Stop Leaving Home
“Someday I’m finally gonna let go ‘Cause I know there’s a better way I wanna know what’s over that rainbow I’m gonna get out of here someday” – Steve Earle, “Someday” Most of us think of “leaving home” as a rite […]
Remember To Put Yourself In the Right Story Stage
“Shouldn’t I be better at this?” If you’re like me, this is a question you ask a lot when you try new skills or uncommonly-used skills. You wonder if you’re as far along as you should be, and if a […]
The Adventure of Enterprise Software: Salesforce, Mascots, and the Heroic Customer
Is your software cumbersome and complicated? Does it require months of training to use and years of experience to master? Make the challenges into an adventure. Salesforce does. If you’re not a sales or marketing person, you should know that Salesforce is the […]
“Dungeons and Dragons” and the Three Universal Elements of Great Games
Every month or so some friends and I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons, a role-playing game which turns out to be as complicated as modern finance, a religious text, and an assemble-it-yourself furniture order. With a large variety of spells, abilities, […]
Inspiration Is Like Manna
Despite writing daily for over a year now (minus one missed day), I still hardly ever plan out posts more than a few days in advance. More often than not, I find my daily writing idea late at night when […]
Victory Against Evil Is Never Final
I was talking with some church friends last night about the frustrating cycle of history found in the Biblical stories. People turn to violence and injustice and fall to violence and injustice again and again, cycle after cycle. It’s really […]
The World is a Theme Park
Who doesn’t love theme parks? Disney’s Magic Kingdom gives us the lands of “yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.” EPCOT takes us around the world. Universal Studios takes us into the movies, from Harry Potter to The Mummy. We’re even more fascinated by fictional theme parks like […]
Every Good Plot Has Conflicts
What would life be like if you were aware of being in a story? For some time now I’ve been fascinated by the idea of the monomyth popularized by thinkers like Joseph Campbell, C.S. Lewis, and (more recently) Jordan Peterson. […]
Book Notes: “Sabriel” Resurrects the Hero’s Journey for a Story About Life and Death
It seems that so many fantasy stories center on the relationship between death and life – and the various ways in which it can go wrong. From Tolkien’s Numenoreans to Rowling’s Deatheaters, the villains in many stories become villains because […]
This Job Is Going To Be Legendary: How Archetypes Keep Showing Up In Work
No normal kid has ever wanted to be a marketer. I certainly didn’t. I grew up reading legends and stories of monarchs, knights, adventurers, and wizards. If you’re anything like me and many kids, these were *our* ideal roles. It’s why many of […]
You’re Not the Only Person On a Quest
Quest, n. “a long or arduous search for something.” If, like me, you feel like you’re on a quest in your life, it’s very easy to treat other people as background characters at best and obstacles to be overcome at […]
Why You Should Know Some Stories By Heart
“Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.” – Samwise Gamgee, The Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers I’m one of those people who love re-watching favorite movies […]