Story of My Life in More Than One Direction

Hello, hello, and welcome to T.E.A. Time with Tayvin Bayless. To any first-time listeners, I hope you decide to stick around, because I’m glad you’re here. And a hearty welcome back to anyone joining me again. What’s the story of how you got here? I’d love to know.

Anyone who knows anything about me probably knows that I love to read. I am someone with many interests, and the time and attention I have to give to those interests ebbs and flows, meaning it rises and falls, comes and goes. Not so for reading. I am never very far from a book, and I am always thinking about a story. There is something about being inside a good story that feels different from everything else. It doesn’t compete with my other interests for attention. It just quietly occupies a corner of my mind at all times, waiting for me to come back to it.

Before I get into today’s stories, I want to share a phrase that I think will take on new meaning by the time we’re done. The phrase is: story of my life.

In everyday English, this phrase is used to humorously describe something that keeps happening to you, a recurring pattern of bad luck or misfortune. If something embarrassing keeps happening over and over, you might sigh and say, “Story of my life.” It’s self-deprecating, which means you’re making a joke at your own expense.

Here’s a real example. Right before I went on stage to perform in a vocal competition, I ripped my pants. I performed anyway, but I was mortified. That’s the story of my life.

Now, in today’s episode, I want to take that phrase seriously for a moment. Because I think our lives really are stories. And the question of how we tell them matters more than most of us realize.

My favorite genre to read is science fiction and fantasy. The stories are exciting, and it’s wonderful to step into someone else’s imagination. The stories told in this genre help us explore big questions. What’s right and wrong? Why do people behave the way they do? How should we live? They can even teach us something about history or the real world. More than all of that, though, fantasy stories help me connect with others, and they have led me to some of the most important relationships in my life.

When I was eleven, going on twelve, my mom, my grandparents, and I moved 760 miles from the town of Turlock, California, to Saratoga Springs, Utah. We had some other family living in Utah, but not anyone my age. I left all my friends behind to go to a place where I knew essentially no one.

This wasn’t my first time moving. We had made two other large moves before this one. But this one was particularly challenging. In Turlock, I had two very close friends named Hank and Emanuel. Both of them had reached out to me on my first day of third grade, when I was the new kid in class for the first time. They were the kind of friends who made a real impact on my life. Though I haven’t kept in close touch with either of them over the years, I still think of them from time to time.

In this new town in a faraway state, would I ever find friends like that? This was a question that worried me quite a bit, made worse by the fact that we were moving after the school year had already started. I would be going into class at a disadvantage. Everyone else had weeks to form friendships and settle into their groups. It is a nerve-wracking thing to be the new kid.

Well, I survived. The school year passed, and I had gotten to know a few of my classmates reasonably well. But it was my first summer break in Utah when things really changed, because I joined a summer book club with some of the kids from school. Each week, one of the kids in the group chose a book, and then we would all meet at someone’s house to talk about what we read, hang out, and play games.

It was a small group, but we had an enormous amount in common. Most of us ended up in the chess club together. We were in school plays and musicals. We formed a band and an a cappella group. Several of us were even on the tennis team together in high school. We started off as a book club, but went on to explore many other interests together. It was in that group that I made some of the best friends I’ve ever had, most of whom I am still friends with to this day. And it was our shared love of stories that brought us together. The book club was the door. Behind it was everything else.

Books didn’t just shape my friendships. They also shaped the most important relationship of my life. In 2019, I got back from Japan and returned to college life. I was 22 years old, and I was very much interested in women, but they didn’t seem to feel the same way about me. Then came Emma. We were in Japanese class together. She was tall, smart, and beautiful, and somehow I got her to agree to spend time with me outside of class.

She suggested we bake a pie together for our first date. I loved the idea immediately, so I said yes without mentioning one important detail: I can’t eat pie. I have a gluten intolerance, which means wheat-based foods are not good for my body. The pie was baked, it smelled wonderful, and when she offered me a slice, I told her I was on a diet. Which was true. I just neglected to mention that my decision not to eat the pie was less about my diet and more about not spending the rest of the evening in considerable discomfort. She eventually found out the truth. She found it funny. Mostly.

The date went well, and we began messaging each other rather often. In one of our early conversations after that first date, we started talking about books. It was at this moment that I knew she was the one for me. When I asked her what her favorite book was, she answered: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. You may have heard me mention that book before on this podcast. That’s my favorite book. The love of that story helped bring us together, and our shared love of storytelling has continued to bring us closer ever since.

Let’s take a closer look at today’s expression: story of my life.

We said in the warm-up that this phrase describes a recurring pattern, something that keeps happening, usually something unfortunate. Ripped pants before a performance. Running late every single time. Losing your keys when you’re already running out the door. Story of my life.

But I want to think about why this phrase works the way it does. Because when you say “story of my life,” you’re doing something interesting. You’re stepping outside the moment and looking at your own life from a distance, as if it were a story someone else might read. You’re finding a pattern. You’re giving it a name. And usually, you’re laughing at it.

That’s actually a sophisticated thing to do. It requires you to take something frustrating and reframe it, to turn it into a narrative rather than just an experience. And the moment something becomes a narrative, you have a little more control over how it feels.

Think about the two stories I told today. When I moved to Utah at eleven, I could have told myself a story about being the outsider, the kid who would never fit in. And when I was 22 and convinced that no one was interested in me, I could have told myself a story about being unlovable. Based on what I knew at the time, it would have been easy to tell a tragic story. But that would have been wrong, because the ending wasn’t written yet.

Here is what I want you to sit with: the expression “story of my life” is usually used for bad luck. But your life is a story you are always in the middle of writing. The genre is up to you.

So here’s your challenge before the next episode: think of one thing in your life that you’ve been telling as a sad story. Just one. And try telling it differently. You don’t have to believe the new version yet. Just try it and see how it feels.

In many ways, our lives are shaped by stories. Not just the ones we read or the ones we watch, though there is no doubt those can shape us in profound ways. The stories that matter most are the ones we tell ourselves, because they shape who we will become.

When things don’t go the way I hoped, what do I tell myself? Am I a failure? Am I unlucky? Or am I just on my way to something better? Every day, we narrate our own lives. And how we choose to tell that story will determine whether it feels like a tragedy or a triumph.

A book club in a new town gave me my closest friends. A conversation about a fantasy novel helped me find my wife.

That’s part of the story of how I got here.

Whatever story you’re in the middle of right now, keep writing it, because you’re not at the end yet.

And with that, my cup is empty. Thanks for joining me for T.E.A. Time. Until the next pot.

The title of this podcast is in reference to this famous song
One Direction – Story of My Life