Linda Duda Craig

We long to be wrapped in a good story. We may no longer spend our evenings together around a fire under the open sky speaking, dancing, and singing stories of where to find game for dinner, but we still long for the comfort of a roadmap. We are still captivated by the power of a rich story. 

Our “stories” in a social media culture are but 10-to-90-second flashes of light, sound, and stickers. They grab our attention, but leave our minds reeling to fill in the blanks.

We leave much of the collective storytelling, our framing of our emotional bodies, not to the circles of human connection, but to the marketers of consumer goods. The advertisers. Advertisers speak in shared language of getting ahead and gaming to win. I advocate for the value of strengthening our emotional-body connections so that we can frame our own stories; and create our own businesses and creative projects that will shape the culture around us in our individual, labyrinthine images. I tell the story of how I did it.

I tell the story of myself through art and business so that you may feel free to speak and expand the story of you, too. As a mentor, teacher, and creator of a wildly successful customer service business, I’ve trained to listen for the stories we tell ourselves that hold us back from taking a chance on our own voices. Let’s rewrite those stories in beauty and power. Let’s pick up some tools together and fill in the blanks with knowledge that works. Let’s study the boxes; the molds. Use them to our advantage. And expand, or even break them, when necessary.

I want a world beyond surface and soundbite stories. Let’s do it all through fierce play, together. Let’s grow the possible with an UNREASONABLE and infectious JOY.