By creating a system requiring that I write only a few sentences a day, I was also sure that I’d never miss a day, and this is important. Miss one day, and you’ll allow yourself to miss two. Miss two days, and you’ll skip a week. Skip a week and you’re no longer doing your Homework for Life.
Moreover, by placing these most storyworthy moments in a spreadsheet, I could sort them for later use. I could copy, cut, and paste these ideas into other spreadsheets easily, allowing me to ultimately separate the truly storyworthy ideas from the ones that merely had potential.
Finally, by placing the stories in a spreadsheet, I was better able to see patterns in my life, and sometimes these patterns became stories too.
For example, Elysha and I never fight. We may disagree at times, but even those moments are rare. We have never raised our voices to each other and have never said anything that required an apology. It’s disgusting. I know.
Then one day last year, at the onset of the summer, Elysha asked me to install the air conditioners in the windows throughout our home. I didn’t want to. When we were looking at houses years ago, we both agreed that central air was a nonnegotiable. We had to have it. Then we caved at the last minute and bought a house without central air. I was admittedly on board at the time. I liked the house a lot and agreed to the concession.
But I’m annoyed at myself today for not holding out for a home with AC. Putting the air conditioners into the windows each year is a reminder of how I failed to hold the line on this nonnegotiable point.
The air conditioners also get heavier every year, which of course is not the case, but it certainly seems as if they do. They serve as annual reminders of my slow march toward death and the inevitability of my mortality. Each year I grow weaker and frailer. I hate it.
I don’t handle my mortality well at all.
So I told Elysha, “No. Not today. I’m not putting in the air conditioners. I don’t feel like it!”
“Okay,” she answered from the living room. “No problem.”
Then I stewed for ten minutes. Thoughts swirled in my head: Easy for her to ask me to install the damn air conditioners. She doesn’t have to carry them up from the basement. Besides, I grew up without a single air conditioner in my house. She can handle one more hot day without her precious cool air. I have things to do. More important things than carry four air conditioners up two flights of stairs and jam them into window casings.
I quietly grumbled and groused for ten minutes, and then, in a huff, I stomped down the stairs to the basement and started bringing the air conditioners up, banging them around a little more than necessary and grunting as I did so.
“Are you okay?” Elysha called from the other room.
“I’m fine!” I called back. “I’m bringing up the air conditioners.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice as sweet as pie. “Thanks!”
She had no idea how annoyed I was. In truth, I don’t think she cared one bit if I brought the air conditioners up on that day or three weeks later. She had no idea how I was feeling. I jammed those air conditioners into the windows while stewing in my own petty, infantile anger.
That was the story I recorded that day. Not exactly a storyworthy moment in its own right, but perhaps an anecdote for a larger story someday.
Two months later, I reacted the same way when she asked if I could mow the lawn. I protested. I grumbled silently about her request. I paced back and forth in a huff. Then I mowed the lawn. Angrily. Pushing that lawn mower as if I wanted it dead.
Seeing that same behavior appear twice on my list made me realize something surprising: I do fight with my wife. I just don’t fight with words. I fight by grudgingly and loudly doing chores that I don’t want to do. I yell at her by banging air conditioners into walls and pushing my lawn mower furiously across the grass in neat, even rows.
Best of all, she has no idea that any of this is going on.
This pattern-turned-realization became a very funny story about my marriage that audiences love, and I learned something about myself and my marriage in the process too. My spreadsheet allowed me to see this pattern.
When I started my Homework for Life, I didn’t know what the results would be. At best, I hoped to find a handful of stories that I might be able to tell onstage someday.
Instead, something amazing happened. As I reflected on each day of my life and identified the most storyworthy moments, I began to develop a storytelling lens — one that is now sharp and clear. With this lens, I began to see that my life is filled with stories. Moments of real meaning that I had never noticed before were suddenly staring me in the face. You won’t believe how plentiful they are.
There are moments when you connect with someone in a new and unexpected way. Moments when your heart fills with joy or breaks into tiny pieces. Moments when your position on an issue suddenly shifts or your opinion of a person changes forever. Moments when you discover something new about yourself or the world for the first time. Moments when a person says something you never want to forget or desperately wish you could forget.
Not every day contains a storyworthy moment for me, but I found that the longer I did my homework, the more days did contain one. My wife likes to say that I can turn any moment into a good story, and my friend Plato has said that I can turn the act of picking up a pebble from the ground into a great story. Neither of these statements is true. The truth is this: I simply see more storyworthy moments in the day than most people. They don’t go unnoticed, as they once did.
I discovered that there is beauty and import in my life that I never would have imagined before doing my homework, and that these small, unexpected moments of beauty are oftentimes some of my most compelling stories.
Look at the highlighted item on my spreadsheet, for example. It reads:
Walked Kaleigh. 2:00 AM. Underwear. Birds. Rain. Beauty.
What does this mean?
My dog, Kaleigh, wakes me up at two in the morning. She almost never does this, so I’m surprised. Annoyed too. It’s clear she needs to pee. I’m wearing a pair of Valentine-themed satin boxers, given to me by my mother-in-law (a fact I try hard to forget every time I put them on), and nothing else.
I have a decision to make: take the time to get dressed or bring the dog out while I’m wearing nothing more than my boxers.
It’s early November, but we’re in the midst of a bout of warm weather. I live on one of those short side streets that you don’t drive on unless you live on the street. I know all my neighbors. None of them are the type to be awake in the middle of the night. And it’s two in the morning. I’ll likely have the street to myself.
“Fine,” I say, staring down at Kaleigh from my bed. “Let’s go.”
I bring her onto the lawn and wait as she does her business. My boxers-only decision is looking good. I’ll be back in