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

Today is my birthday. I haven’t wished for something on my birthday in a long time, but hell, I’m 25, and I’m feeling old. So here’s my wish. This wish is for you. Today, I wish that you’ll read this and do something that scares you. You’ll say something out loud that you’ve been afraid (…)

So it’s Tuesday afternoon, and I’m in an almost empty TV studio in the middle of Springfield. I am sitting next to Leigh Moody, news anchor at the local ABC station. I am the guest for the 4 p.m. news “Close-Up” interview. The countdown goes “4.. 3… 2…,” and then Leigh turns to me and (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

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 (…)

Let me take you back to 2009. Newspapers were slashing staff daily. Jobs weren’t plentiful. A young, wide-eyed Dan Oshinsky was about to graduate from college. And in the midst of all this, a strange thing happened: A big newspaper chain decided that they really liked me. They liked my attitude and my skills. They (…)

Danielle LaPorte, Internet thinker person, asked a question on her blog today: “What’s one dumb thing that you used to believe in?” As someone who says/does a lot of dumb things, I felt qualified to provide this answer: ¶¶¶ I used to believe in radical, blunt honesty. In speaking without filter. In giving advice even (…)

“People change. Circumstances change. Legal documents don’t change.” — Brent Beshore, CEO of AdVentures At my first job out of college, I was told that I would get health care. Dental, medical — the usual. This sounded good to me, even though I didn’t know what a co-pay was, or a deductible, or anything else (…)