What story am I repeating today without realizing it?

The point, of course, is to listen for a story — the real problem isn’t that I’m telling one, it’s that I’m doing it without noticing. And when I do listen, it’s often the same story I’ve told before.

Usually it’s because I’m tired. Or restless. Or just a little off — too hot, too hungry. Those small frictions push me back into familiar scripts.

Beneath it all is the same thing: trying to control how things turn out. How others think. What they do. And that effort — my stories, my reasons for telling them, and the things I try to control — is all just the everyday, unremarkable stuff.

History as usually written is quite different from history as usually lived. The historian records the exceptional because it is interesting.

ɕ

There's also a short page to help you get the most from Pause— including how you can listen to each issue of Pause in your podcast player.