You remember that game you played as a kid, where you and your siblings or friends kept a balloon in the air as long as you could?

You’d dive, run, jump, grunt, yelp, and knock yourself silly to see how long you could keep it up.

With each paff of your hand, the balloon went sailing up and over the furniture… Or not.

Your parents’ anguished cries of, ‘CAREful!’ fell on deaf ears, drowned out by giggles as one of you toppled over the coffee table.

And by the time you surfaced from this game, your jumpers had been discarded in a shambolic pile, sweat ran down your face, and your cheeks glowed. Starving, you went on the prowl for that elusive packet of chips in the cupboard. Or, failing that, the choc bits that ya mum kept for cooking, but which we all knew were there to be surreptitiously stolen by the handful and munched while “fossicking” in the cupboard. (With a sentry posted, of course.)

Well, that game – called ‘Balloon’ apparently – is now an international, pro-level sport.

Some enterprising youngster booted it up in the eSports community, and now you can go Pro.

I nearly fell off my chair when I saw it.

Clearly, my generation listened way too much to its elders’ stories of what was and wasn’t possible in life.

I’m telling you about the Balloon World Cup because it’s the kind of internet content that blew up this year.

Yet it’s the type of thing that you’d probably never consider as content.

And it’s also the kind of story that you probably feel is more in the realm of fiction than weird fact.

But the point is that reality is always weirder than fiction.

It’s always a more interesting read.

And the stuff that, in your life, seems dumb, crazy, kooky, or downright insane makes a goldmine of reading for other people.

Everyone has a story worth telling.

The intense shame of our current Zeitgeist is that more people feel like businesses’ stories are worth more than personal ones.

The reverse is true.

Personal stories teach, inspire, keep knowledge captured, and illustrate the movement of times, cultures, lands, people.

And in this time of impermanence, when photo albums are a thing of the past, and personal archives inaccessible because the deceased had passwords that they never passed on, how are you going to ensure that your contribution continues?

By writing it down.

By working with a ghost to do it so you don’t have to take a year-long sabbatical to do it.

And if you’re wondering how to find such a resource? Baby, you’re lookin’ at one.

Xx Leticia “weird stories are the best stories” Mooney