I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling these past couple of weeks.
Such intense contemplations have most probably been sparked by a period of intense reading (induced by holidays and extended commutes), my day-to-day work and, most recently, a Monday night visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral to listen to some poetry.
Firstly, some context: I really do consider myself extremely lucky to have found myself a career which I truly love. As a profession, media often flies under the radar: it’s the industry you don’t know exists until you find yourself immersed within in. It’s fun, fast-paced and extremely indulgent. But as someone who spent my younger years contemplating political science and communications theory, running as far away from numbers and maths as I could, to find myself spending upwards of 8 hours a day buried in spreadsheets is a huge departure from my 17-year-old life goal to be editor of Vogue or the next J.K Rowling.
But this week, I’ve had a bit of an epiphany: turns out old storytelling habits die hard. I certainly don’t have the measured eloquence of the thoughtful and charming poets I had the pleasure of listening to earlier this week but storytelling still permeates most (if not all) aspects of my life. Most literally, this manifests in the form of this blog, my relatively new-found love of photography and my journal. However, it’s also present in the form of media strategies, endless emails, post campaign reporting and creative best practice presentations. Not to mention, the countless media buzzwords laden with ambiguity which have a pesky habit of tumbling out of my mouth daily.
So whilst it’s decidedly more data driven than I had anticipated and perhaps, on the surface, less culturally significant, it’s still something.
And though perhaps what I took most out of the poetry evening at St. Paul’s was probably off on more of a tangent than anticipated, a renewed appreciation for storytelling – even its most basic form – certainly doesn’t feel like a bad thing.
