It’s much easier to write about someone else than it is to write about myself. When I started this project, I never intended on doing the surveys with anyone else. Writing the questions, briefly rushing through thoughts of what my own answers would be while pouring over my laptop at 3 a.m., that was enough. I know my side needs to be told, but I don’t know how to tell it.

This is Our Story started as a podcast idea. My sister and I sat in her sunroom having a cigarette and we made jokes and comments on all the people we know; it’s our favorite pastime. I began to rave about a podcast I had recently fallen in love with, My Favorite Murder. I told her I wanted to start a podcast. I just needed an idea.

After some musing and her sarcasm heavily coating the idea of making one, I remembered an idea I’d had about two years before that moment with her. I wanted to start a project called, The Dash. I would visit local roadside markers, expanding when I went on road trips to visit those as well, take beautiful photos, find the family, and write their loved one’s biography.

It’s easy to forget someone who hasn’t done something significant. That’s a hurtful part of our lives we need to cope with, or blissfully ignore, in order to not spend our waking lives full of dread about what’s going to happen to our legacy when we die. Tragedy in the form of accident or malice can preserve that memory, but as even the best ones do, we will all fade into history.

With The Dash, I wanted to capture those lives and bring them back to the surface in the form of a coffee table book. Sitting there in the heart of the home, the place you gather with your family and celebrate the most special moments of your life, you’ll have a chance to glance at or delve into the lives of the ones already forgotten. Even in a fleeting thought, you’re acknowledging they were here. Isn’t that what we all want? To be acknowledged, validated? I think it is. It’s what I want.

Then again, I have narcissistic tendencies.

So we sat there and talked, rambled, laughed about interviewing the meth junkies that plague Jacobsville.

“So, you want to just interview whoever.”

“Yes!” I yelped. “We can talk to homeless people and tell their story. They’ll be so interesting, and no one talks to them. Imagine what they’ll tell us.”

This idea was short-lived. We had one brainstorm session after our chat and then subsequently got lost in the business of our lives; her with a kiddo and a husband, me with school and work and general avoidance of all things adult.

Months go by while my makeshift podcast equipment accumulated dust in my office, the tangle of cords finding a new purpose as a nest for my cat. I was both obsessed and dismissive, a feat I’ve yet to understand though it applies to most ideas I come up with, and I let the idea of making this podcast fade. In the meantime, I brought up the idea of another topic, something more darkly humorous in an effort to establish my podcasting abilities (that I hadn’t formed).

F-Everything was my next bright idea. I roped in my cousin to be my first guest, but she was too involved in her own life to make time. Which is fine. Only a tad bitter about the deal.

Still pondering what in the world I could do for that first episode, I was also wondering how to turn This is Our Story into something. I had toyed with a mail subscription, each box being a different biography and trip inside another person’s life. Surprisingly expensive. I searched a few Pinterest boards for ideas of crafting journals myself, and it requires more effort than I’d be willing to give per journal.

Endlessly creative. Endlessly lazy.

I sat at my desk one night, chatting away to those with their iPhone emergencies as I did most nights as an AppleCare chat advisor. Thinking again on how I can make TiOS happen, propel myself out of this... fantastic job, craft myself into a legitimate content creator, and become more appealing to grad schools.

That was the moment that I thought, “Oh my god. Surveys.”

It sounds simplistic, but I took it and ran with it. I would make surveys with writing prompts and beg my friends to take part, hoping it would catch on at some point. I made a cheap website, a free Gmail, and discovered SurveyMonkey in all of its wonder.

A lot of my close friends immediately jumped into the project, raving about my genius, which I enjoy far more heavily than I should, and showing support for me, for us, and for the whole idea. I feel blessed, honestly, to have such amazing people behind me, and blessed is not an adjective I ever wanted to use for myself. More on that at a later time.

“So what is it?” I assume you must be asking.

This is Our Story is a global art project, as I keep calling it. Its purpose is to strip people of their names and aesthetics, and focus on telling their story without the most basic source of stereotypes. As a race, we often judge people based on photos and their names, even, and far too frequently, pleasure is found in doing this to someone. How many of you people-watch at Wal-Mart and snicker to the person you’re with about the kids and their mothers making a raucous in the cereal aisle? The pregnant teenager paying for her milk with a WIC card? I could list scenarios all day but for the sake of my own sanity, I won’t.

It’s simple enough. Each week I send out a survey with questions relating to one topic or another. There’s always a theme. There’s always an agenda. There’s always a dozen mistakes... (It’s a work in progress.) You write your answers, the first question being your Brethren ID, a 5-digit number you generate on the website before signing up. The purpose of that ID is to keep your information together and provide a source of anonymity.

It runs in seasons. Each season is 13 weeks, 13 surveys plus a monthly check-in, and at the end of that season my editing team [sic: my three best friends and I] puts it together and we circulate it using that Brethren ID you generated at the very beginning and use every week for your survey.

What we’re hoping, what I’m hoping, is that we can start to look at ourselves with a tighter scrutiny and look at others with less. There needs to be more understanding and compassion between all of us. That’s the mission of TiOS, and to be quite honest, I’m amazed myself at the whole thing.

One day, all we’ll have to tell our story is the dash between the two most significant dates of our life. Make it count.

Please know, I say this with the best of intention. Homelessness is a horrific problem in this country, and despite my crass words, I genuinely enjoy opportunities to talk to someone suffering through it. If anyone needs a story to be told, it’s them.

It sounds much more cult-like than originally intended. “Subscriber” is cold, “participant” is medical, and I really couldn’t think of a third option. “Sistren” is apparently a word, but given the patriarchal society we live in, far too many men would push off the project for fear of being labeled feminine. I like “Brethren” because why not? Women can be boys, too.