In 2001, I set foot inside a nightclub, just off the seashore in
Ocean City, Maryland, for the first time in my life. It was senior
week, the week after graduation from high school, and I was 18 years
old... and my efforts to get my life on track were sputtering out. I'd
tried
everything
else I could think of to learn social skills, to make friends, to get
girls; but none of it had worked. I was liked, in my way - most of my
classmates thought I was cool, or a curiosity... something of a high
school legend. But I had no friends to speak of. I kept everyone at
arm's length, fearful of substantial social interaction. I didn't even
know how
to hold a conversation with people. And unlike almost everyone else in
my
graduating class, I wasn't going to college come summer's end.
No one understood why one of the best students in school wouldn't go
to college, with no job, and no backup plan, but how could
they. They had their normal lives. Friends, girlfriends, parties, fun.
Walking into a nightclub alone - an
environment I'd never been in in my life - and walking out with a girl
was my last resort. While the rest of my classmates drank and laughed
and talked and partied with
their friends and hookups and paramours, I struck out into the night on
my own, driven and determined, on one
last, hubristic, quixotic quest that was only ever going to end one
way.
One of the older pieces of writing of mine still floating around on
the Internet is a newsletter I wrote for theApproach back in 2007
called "Becoming a Great Storyteller." Because I already wrote
something on it back then, and because much of the emphasis I've placed
on Girls Chase is on getting others to tell you their stories more than it is to
get you telling yours, I
never took the time to get a proper treatment up for how to tell a story.

If you've read through the other articles on this site, you've no
doubt
come across some of the more story-driven pieces here - one of the more
classic examples of this being "Can't Stop Thinking About Her?"
Storytelling is a key component of
most things involving people
- whether that's writing, teaching, or
speaking;
building connections with others, delivering speeches at
political rallies, or shouting on high from the pulpit.
The best actors are storytellers.
The best bosses are storytellers.
The best authors are storytellers.
The best seducers are storytellers.
The best salesmen are storytellers.
The most powerful, compelling, magnetizing people from all walks of
life are storytellers.
And if you'd like to join their ranks, to hold that candle up that
flickers light onto the damp and dusty walls of intrigue and
enchantment and fantasy and allure, to attract the minds of those
trapped in lives of boredom and normality and sameness and deliver them
a wake up call that snaps them at once to attention, then, to do that,
you must know how to tell a story.