My Influences

The end of this week I’ve been working on a chart listing various influences throughout my life for George’s Story Club.1

Get a big sheet of paper (or set up a spreadsheet) and construct a table. The column headings should mark the years of your life - the first column should be labeled “Birth to 5 years old,” and every column after that should span five years. (“5 - 10 years old,” “10 - 15 years old,” and so on, all the way up to your current age, there across the top of the page.)

The six rows of the table should be labeled as follows: “Stories/Novels/Music/Movies/TV/Experiences/People.”

Now: fill in the table, listing those things that truly rocked your world during those intervals, in those categories. When you were between the ages of 5 and 10, what did you read/view/experience that made you crazy with delight? With what album were you obsessed between the ages of 15 and 20? No, really.

This exercise seemed easy enough, not too time consuming or difficult as I know all the culture and people and experiences that have shaped me throughout my life, I was there through all of it after all. As I worked through each cell, thinking back, remembering what had a big impact during these time frames of my life, I was taken aback, pushed to relive not only what had expanded my world of possibilities, but why they had such an impact, pushing me to remember what was going on with me and my life at those times.

Cell by cell, the trajectory of my life was strewn with influences I had forgotten (Choose Your Own Adventure) or blacked out (ahem.. Gallagher), and there was a reason why they impacted me. Why at that time with what I was learning and dealing with these influences hit home, opening my mind, challenging my idea of the world, giving me hope for my future self. I had forgotten that I was carrying all these different moments of discovery, the people and art that changed me over and over again in different ways. All the different paths I looked down through another’s eyes and mind, and how all of those things are in me now, have in many ways made me who I am now.

I highly recommend sitting down and doing this exercise. Revisit it a day or two later and add more as your mind resurfaces forgotten influences and reminds you of who you were before and after these moments of discovery. I think I’ll be revisiting my chart going forward, adding things I remember and the new influences I’m still discovering. Without further ado, here is my initial chart from the last few days.