{"id":1181,"date":"2026-04-04T05:45:43","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T05:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/?p=1181"},"modified":"2026-04-04T05:45:43","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T05:45:43","slug":"storytelling-math-and-social-anxiety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/04\/storytelling-math-and-social-anxiety\/","title":{"rendered":"Storytelling, Math, and Social Anxiety"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Took my son on a bike ride downtown today.  It was the first time we&#8217;ve done that which is really exciting.  He&#8217;s been coming along with me occassionally for bike rides but we always go out a country road, the one in this picture.  It&#8217;s nice and peaceful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"226\" src=\"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ElectraTownieMoon-300x226.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1183\" srcset=\"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ElectraTownieMoon-300x226.jpg 300w, https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ElectraTownieMoon-1024x771.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ElectraTownieMoon-768x578.jpg 768w, https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ElectraTownieMoon-1536x1157.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ElectraTownieMoon-2048x1542.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>But,  I&#8217;m trying to get us out and about more often because he&#8217;s struggling lately with being social.  I did too, frankly, for a very long time.  Decades.  A lifetime really.  The person he sees is much different than the person I&#8217;ve been most of my life:  introverted.  He sees me now and someone who talks to everyone.  I had to learn how to do that.  So I&#8217;m trying to model it for him.  Hopefully some of it can rub off on him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So we&#8217;re sitting there and we&#8217;re approached by someone I don&#8217;t recognize, but he knows who I am.  My son knew right away.  Turned out to be his math teacher.  Pretty wild coincidence considering he goes to school 20 miles away.  We got a kick out of that, and my son said, &#8220;I regret nothing&#8221; in regards to being forced to come with me downtown and suffer the indignities of socializing.  Mainly it&#8217;s children that bothers him the most.  All the noise and chaotic energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last night my town&#8217;s theater company posted about an upcoming festival on poetry and storytelling.  It immediately reminded me of the book I read last year called Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks.  It was such a good book and I was immediately inspired to want to join some kind of storytelling jam.  And it looks like it&#8217;s happening in my podunk town!  I have two months to come up with something.  I&#8217;ll need to re-read the book because I forgot some of the techniques for generating ideas for stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I think one of the things you&#8217;re supposed to do is think about something each day that happened to you which fundamentally changed you, even just a little bit.  The only thing I can think of today was just taking my son doing what I just mentioned, socializing in public.  I hope we keep on doing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Took my son on a bike ride downtown today. It was the first time we&#8217;ve done that which is really exciting. He&#8217;s been coming along with me occassionally for bike rides but we always go out a country road, the one in this picture. It&#8217;s nice and peaceful. But, I&#8217;m trying to get us out [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1183,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1185,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions\/1185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnnycarlos.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}