The Moth: Life Lessons Learned While Pole Vaulting

As I prepare to attend another Moth StorySlam on Thursday night, with hopes of taking the stage and telling a story on the theme of Armor, I have finally uploaded the video of my first StorySlam performance on July 12, 2011 at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café in New York City.
The theme of the night was Ego, and by some miracle of miracles, I managed to win the competition that evening and go onto a GrandSlam Championship in October, where I placed third or fourth.

First is the only relevant place in a Moth competition, which I kind of love.

At the time, I described it as one of the most important nights of my life, and now that almost a year has gone by and I have a little perspective, I feel exactly the same way. The fact that I won the competition that evening was amazing, but much more important, I discovered that I loved the thrill of taking the stage and a telling a story. Since that first night, I have taken the Moth stage for two other StorySlams and won one of them.

I also recently told a story for The Story Collider, another New York City based story telling organization.

That first StorySlam last summer started it all, and it made storytelling an enormously important part of my life.