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

I am finding that lately, I have had to defend my choice of telephone. I find this strange, as my telephone does exactly what I want it to do: It places and receives phone calls anywhere in America. The fact that it does this, and that I pay about $35 per month for such services, (…)

I got a Bon Jovi song stuck in my head the other day. The song was “Have a Nice Day,” the title track from the band’s 2005 album. It’s got all the Bon Jovi hallmarks: those familiar power chords, Richie Sambora playing a double-necked guitar and multiple lyrics about “living my life.” All it’s missing (…)

A week ago, Mizzou’s men’s basketball coach, Mike Anderson, left to take the same position at Arkansas. And in the past week, there’s been a lot of speculation about who will become my alma mater’s new head coach. Mizzou went hard after Purdue’s coach, Matt Painter. Today, it looked like MU was going to sign (…)

I’ve been spending my week down in St. Petersburg, Fla., at the Poynter Institute. The theme of the week: entrepreneurial journalism. And after seeing case study after case study about successful journalism start-ups, I’m starting to see three common areas of overlap during the initial start-up process. Those areas are: Conceptualization –> Validation –> Realization (…)

Jorge Chávez International Airport is not a fun place to be, especially after midnight when you’re leaving Peru but your flight back to Houston has been delayed yet again. But my delay at Lima’s airport gave me a few minutes to reflect on my recent trip abroad, and especially on a few things that I (…)

Today is my birthday, and my annual reminder of how much I dislike the concept of time. Truth is, time is unfair. When I see someone wearing a watch, I don’t see someone with punctuality in mind. I see someone slowly counting down the seconds until the grave. What is a day, after all? It’s (…)

About a month ago, I started writing a blog post that I never finished. It was about Dunbar’s Number, which explains a simple human limitation: we can only really care about so many people. Dunbar puts a limit on it: 150. But thanks to Facebook and Twitter, we’re more easily connected to others than ever (…)

What follows is a brief thought about the nature of God. It is not a serious thought. I hope you do not find it blasphemous. — Dan I have recently begun to consider the idea that if there a God, he is probably not very good at multitasking. I’ll direct you to this recent study, (…)

Soon, I found myself keeping score. About to graduate, aimless, preparing for joblessness and possessing a degree worth about as much as the paper it was printed on, I realized — belatedly — that I wasn’t exactly a modern guarantee of potential. I started searching for something tangible, something worthwhile to get me through my (…)

The revelation came to me in the moments before sleep, and I went searching for something to scribble it down on. All I could find was a small envelope on my kitchen table. But what else could I be expected to write on in such a moment? What hit me last night, what pulled me (…)