dan oshinsky dot com: A blog about stories, the work... and my mother.

I was at the Stry.us HQ/apartment on Monday night, sitting on the floor, when I looked up and announced to my editor, Jordan: This is the furthest along this project has ever been. Stry.us — or versions of it, at least — had been on my mind since 2007 or so. But it really came (…)

I’m a member of a local Toastmasters club(1), and one of our members gave a talk last week that was so good, I begged him to let me republish the key themes here on the blog. The talk was by Kenny Freeman, a Columbia, Mo.,-based communications specialist. The talk was titled, “The Wrath of the (…)

These words I have heard over and over again: Oh, I’ve never seen anything like that before. As in the time I brought my cell phone to the AT&T store with a crack in the screen. They asked me, “Did you stab this phone with a knife?” I told them, No! What am I, a (…)

Four months ago, I launched a blog that I had a lot of promise: Smartphoneless.com. I wanted it to be the hub for discussion and thought among my fellow smartphoneless Americans. And I got some amazing feedback in the time since launch, especially from students here at Mizzou. They’d see my phone or hear about (…)

When I was three years old, I found a red pan in my preschool classroom. I used to walk around with this red pan and pretend to play guitar on it. There is a photo of me that my parents still hang onto. I have big, fat cheeks, and goofy, green overalls, and I’m soloing (…)

Tomorrow, I will speak at TEDxMU, the TED-approved event happening here at Mizzou. I’m enormously excited to be a part of the speaking list. Astronauts, businessmen, leaders and thinkers will be speaking. And me, somehow. Of course, I’m not content giving just any speech. I decided that if I was going to give a TED (…)

There is a lot of frustration in the news industry right now. We have this amazing distribution system called the web. We’re entering a golden age of storytelling. Every year, more and more people are taking time for stories. And we’re still not making money. But consider the following: Peter Durand patented the tin can (…)

Two things caught my attention last night and got me thinking about the work I’m doing right now. The first was this Instagram photo of the rainbow at the end of the road. (More on that photo in a second.) The second was Jean-Ralphio. Okay, not actually Jean-Ralphio, one of those strange, lovable TV characters (…)

There’s a Bruce Springsteen anecdote I really love. By the mid-1970s, he had recorded and released two albums — two really good albums — already. But Springsteen felt the pressure to turn in a breakthrough hit with his third album. He feared that if the third album didn’t go big, he might be finished in (…)

Probably around January of 2010, a few months before I left my desk job in San Antonio, I started having these daydreams. I’d be driving along I-35 to a Spurs game, and I’d start fantasizing about just driving beyond, past the city limits, past Austin, past Dallas. I’d started to think that I wasn’t ever (…)