I Daydream. A lot.
Instead of living it, I dream about doing it.
I imagine clever dialogues, witty retorts, and spectacular actions.
Daydreaming distracts me from the present purpose: engaging with people, completing projects, creating art, or writing a blog post. It also prevents me from making mistakes and learning from them, making breakthroughs with people and ideas, and acquiring actual skills and building extensive portfolios. Real life doors do not actually open when you are only pushing on imaginary ones. In the end, daydreaming without translating it into real life, is a waste of time.
I may have a problem…
The Art Daydreaming: A gift? A Curse? Either way, it has become my life...
I sit down at my desk, and I begin to daydream…
(But that was not my intention when I sat down.)
I am sitting at a table, in a restaurant, across from some person. That person most likely exists in real life, but at the moment, I am engaged with an imaginary version of them. We are running through a fake conversation. It is a wonderful, fruitful discussion. It begins with us sharing what we made for dinner last night. Then we move on to tasks and errands we have planned for later that day. And one of us jokes about how we probably won’t accomplish half of them. Finally, we move on to our life problems. An interesting and exciting talk ensues. Quite honest and frank. And funny, too. All this is happening in my mind. Meanwhile, in the real world, the other person is probably doing something productive, while I have not yet put on my sneakers (that is why I sat down at the desk in the first place), let alone got on the treadmill.
So, I go over to the treadmill, start it up, and play my music. The first song takes me to a party, where people are talking loudly, and I am having a lively argument about politics (of course, I am the center of attention). The song changes, it is more mellow, and my daydream shifts. I am now lying in a hospital bed, in a coma, surrounded by a few people, who are talking about me. Most times it is a positive or funny conversation; every so often it is serious and emotional; once in a while, some nasty words are spoken. New song, tempo shifts. Now I am alone on a medieval battlefield fighting against nightmarish creatures. Those moments usually happen after I increase the incline and bump up the speed. At some point, I switch to a podcast. That is when I find myself as a guest speaker on whatever program I am listening to, engaging with the hosts, offering my own insights, observations, and witty quips.
(Yep, I daydream while while using a treadmill.)
Heck, I am doing it right now, sitting alone in my car, while my daughter is inside a building enduring a PT session. I was going to get some writing done (brought my laptop along for this specific purpose). And just as I begin typing away (these very words you are reading in fact), my mind begins to conjure up images. I start inflating them with stories.
Sitting alone, in his car, typing away, hoping to get a draft done before he returns home, a young man is unaware of someone quietly walking up to the front passenger-side window. It is his friend, and it will not be first time that she has done this. She smiles. “This is too easy.”…
I will of course be startled (even though it is my own imagination!). She will laugh, and then we begin to talk. That is until we are interrupted by my Russian counterpart (of course I work for the CIA) who is trying to kill me.
(These are the tame, mundane versions. I have conjured up quite a few wild and crazy scenes, stories, and scenarios.)
And this has been going on throughout my life.
But daydreams are not simply a way to avoid a chore, or a quick and messy escape from monotony. Most of the time they serve other purposes: a way to suppress my social anxiety, to organize my thoughts on a subject, and to solve a problem.
Whenever I am going into a new, unfamiliar situation, I feel anxious, and my mind begins to formulate various ways the encounter will play out. I try to picture how I am going to approach the task: what I will wear, where I will walk, how I will talk. Then I will imagine people’s reactions. And my responses. If they get angry, this is what I will say; if they laugh at me, this is the face I will make; if they punch me, this is how I will move out of the way. But here is how this daydreaming gets interesting: I will actually critique my own words and actions. A part of my mind will send out a warning that my imaginary speech was too harsh, too silly, or factually wrong. Or that there is a better way to engage the person. For a long time, this process was debilitating. I refused to move beyond the daydreaming stage, until I had no choice. Then all of my previous mental plans would fall apart, and I would end up humiliating myself.
The worst part? These daydreams have become such an entrenched habit, that I end up doing this with friends—people whom I should be comfortable around—not just strangers. I should not have to treat friendships that way. Actions and words should not be staged when it comes to friends. I am doing better in this department, but I still need some work.
In addition to overcoming anxiety, some of my daydreams become Platonic dialogues. Through internal conversations I have with imaginary people, I lay out my thoughts, structure them into logical, cohesive forms, and apply counterarguments to them. These daydreams become a test for ideas and theories I may have about current events, public policies, ethical dilemmas, relationship issues, and self doubts. The comment sections on social media usually spark these kinds of daydreams. So does listening to politicians. And reading editorials.
Daydreaming like this has honed my analytical skills. To a point. After a while, I would benefit more from having them critiqued by a real-life person. Hopefully I gain the courage to speak out more, the humility to accept constructive criticism better, and the willingness to listen to what I need to hear, not what I want to hear. This blog is a step in the right direction. I just need to follow through with these prescriptions in my daily conversations.
Finally, I daydream to work through problems. If there is a broken appliance that needs repairing, I will do the initial research. Then I will subject this information to a series of questions. But I will do so in an interview format that I perform in my head. Landscaping projects go through several rounds of Q&A between a host and a guest. If I am building a prop, I will spend days, even weeks, developing mental scenarios where I assemble and disassemble it with a group of people, try to fit it in my car in parking lot at a competition, talk about it to the dancers who will be using it, perform with it myself, etc.. Again, all this happens in my head. This daydreaming helps me to discover possible weak points and potential misunderstandings, ask effective questions, determine possible outcomes and consequences. It works. Sometimes.
While this kind of daydreaming has saved me a lot of trouble and headaches, it has also made it difficult for me to finish on time. I am developing skills, especially art skills that I hope will make this process more efficient. I believe that if I can draw better, understand color and perspective, and learn software like Blender, I can transfer more of my ideas efficiently into physical form.
So if daydreams provide a way to alleviate some of my emotional suffering, clarify my inner thoughts, and create solutions, why do I feel a need to change this habit? Well, I definitely do not want to stop daydreaming altogether. (Whom am kidding? Thinking up some of this stuff is entertaining). Instead, I want to channel it in order to be more expressive and productive.
Instead, I need to build a new habit, or perhaps several. I think the easiest one to start with is simply writing down whatever I daydream about. Not that I would share all those stories with the public, but committing them to physical form should act as a release. Who knows, I may even find a few good story threads from which I can author a short story or a novel, or ten. Then there is talking about them to someone. This one is going to take courage, and require me to be selective (some of the things things that I think up probably should never be spoken about—”some things are best left unsaid, unheard”). But I am not just referring to my deepest secrets. I am also referring to ideas that I have about the world that need to be critiqued. Or simply spoken aloud so I can hear whether they are ridiculous, or just require an easy edit. Finally, there is a more aggressive--and, hence, more difficult—habit, one that requires care when implementing. I can make an effort to stop myself from daydreaming the moment it begins. Then make a mental correction (”Hey, you’re daydreaming, stop it, you have to finish vacuuming”). Follow it up quickly with a physical response (”Yep, just keep vacuuming, vacuuming, vacuuming…”). However, I do not want to do this all the time, because daydreaming is not always bad. I will have to pick and choose my battles.
(I must confess, at some point while writing this, I spent at least an hour daydreaming about certain people’s responses to this blog post.)
So, is all this daydreaming a gift or a curse? I do not know yet. However, if I end up writing a book or two, design and write a graphic novel, draw a series of portraits, build a brand new workshop in my garage, live off the grid, choreograph a dance number, become President of the United States, save my family and friends from a zombie apocalypse, or inspire someone just enough to compliment me, then I would have to say all this daydreaming has been a net positive.
(Okay, it was more like three hours, across two days…)
(To be continued...)
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