On Becoming Storyless

A personal update, renewed theme for this newsletter, and ten essays

Hi Friends — I’m writing with a personal update, a renewed theme for this newsletter, and a few essays for your reading pleasure. 

A TLDR of what I’ve been up to:

• Building Foster 

  • Pssst checkout our new Digital Magazine

• Cultivating the 57 Community

• Founding a co-living house

• Living in Mexico City for the winter 

• Practicing Receptivity 

• Writing (See below) 

On that first point, we recently kicked off Foster Season 2 with 95 writers who are journeying together through a five-week intensive experience that culminates in each writer publishing authentic and courageous work.  We’re providing support every step of the way through 1:1 coaching, small groups, professional editing (via Foster), and over 25 participatory workshops.

As you may know, Foster is primarily a writing assistant product. We host these community experiences rarely, but when we do, we enjoy them immensely, pour our heart and soul into them, and I personally love being able to call on the community building and experiential design expertise I’ve cultivated elsewhere.

Over these first weeks of working with these courageous writers, I’ve felt alive, inspired, and… called to dust off the ol’ keyboard and reinvigorate this substack.

A renewed theme: ‘Becoming Storyless’

So, henceforth(!) these emails and essays will together tell my story of “Becoming Storyless,” detailing my explorations, experiments, and tribulations, through Foster and elsewhere, harnessing the transformative power of storytelling. 

But who am I to write about mythology, linguistics, semiotics, narrative design, archetypal psychology, decentralized media, large language models, religion and philosophy?

Well, I’m not academically certified in any of those topics. In fact, I dropped out of college at 19. I’m not a storyteller-scholar at all, really. But I am a storyteller-practitioner; what I lack in academic rigor, I hope to make up for by bringing to these writings a certain kind of storyteller-street-smarts.

As a founder-storyteller, I’ve raised $50M+ for narratives about the future. As a writer-storyteller, I’ve worked with hundreds of writers and editors across thousands of drafts. As an experiential-designer-storyteller, I’ve crafted stories that guide guests through sacred ceremonies, woodland retreats, immersive theater, week-long eco oases, and everything in between. Most importantly, as a recovering drug addict, I’ve come to know storytelling as liberation.

Ten stories I’ve written recently:

• A Year of Receptivity

• Writing & Seeking Truth

• Flow Transfer 

• About My About Me

• On Life Getting Longer

• Contexts & Containers

• Amazon Basics

• A Less Online Existence

• My Rebellion

And(!) *Steve Jobs Voice*…. one more thing: I published a piece for Foster’s first-ever digital magazine, which I’m absolutely bouncing off the walls about. If you’re interested in media and storytelling, our first edition of the magazine, The Media Frontier, will knock your socks off. (Money back guaranteed.) (It’s free.) 

My piece, Dreams of Co-Creativity, covers a co-creative and collaborative future for internet media, as experienced through a dream.

OK, BOOM 💥 — that’s it; one email, ten pieces of writing, and a renewed spirit of commitment toward you, dear reader and fellow storyteller, and our collective journey of discovering, through these writings, the essence of narrative power.

Stay Storying,
Dan 

P.S. I realize it’s been a while and you might be totally uninterested in this new direction, lol, in which case I’d encourage you to smash that unsubscribe button (for real) 👇