The 'Slant' of a Story

As I have been busy documenting my life there seems to be an ongoing storyboard taking place in my mind. When I sit down at the end of the day or week with my pictures and video footage, I have an idea of the 'story' I want to tell by slicing and dicing the clips and rearranging them in a sequence that makes a point and hopefully entertains at the same time (I'm entertaining myself anyway...).

My video footage is all pretty tame stuff. Not the dramas that the media deals with as they make the headlines that sell our papers and grab the viewing audience. But what I have seen from my own experience is how you can put a slant on a story by highlighting one thing, while omitting another.

I am thinking of my daycare videos as I write this ... it wouldn't be too entertaining to watch the mundaneness of our days. Or the chaos (although I would love to insert a soundbite into the blog to portray the soundtrack of my days here). But as I think of my 'audience' I have to be aware of how they will interpret what they are seeing and hearing.

What is more important to me is the perception I get from rewinding the days and reliving them every evening. If I was to focus on the bickering, the crying, the chaos ... it would only serve to bring me down. My goal with my daycare blog is to focus on the positive, the innocense and the humor that I can find in the day.

Am I lying by portraying what I want to portray? Am I really no different than the reporter that only tells one side of the story? Or presents the information with a bias that sways what the reader or viewer is interpreting?

Life is all about perception. The same thing can happen to 10 different people and they could internalize and interpret it 1o different ways (or more). Those 10 people could read the same newspaper article and find 10 ways to understand it.

We choose how to react to life. We choose what to focus on. If you look for the negative in every situation, that is exactly what you'll find. If you look for the positive, you will find that as well.

Whether a person is the one doing the reporting or the one doing the interpreting, there is always room for debate as to the point that is being made. It is like looking at a painting and seeing something different than anyone else. Is life an art form?

And is this the point I actually set out to make when I started this entry????