Daydreaming
Well, it only took two days before I tripped and missed a day yesterday . I thought I could make up the loss, but today, I spent the whole day outside due to the awesome weather we were experiencing. Now I’m here, with an hour left on day 4 and I’ve got nothing. Well, I can’t say I honestly have nothing, I just don’t have anything interesting to say about story. I guess the problem is that I haven’t figured out how to create something substantial without spending a substantial part of my day on it.
Regardless of the circumstances, story has been rolling around in my head constantly throughout the day. But, I’m having trouble taming it. It is a subject with such significant scope it is difficult to do something with it. I really want to focus on where story impacts my life, but it is tough to do that when you keep asking the question, “what is story.” Every time I ask myself that question, my brain takes a different rabbit trail. Perhaps my problem is that I want to tell a good story about story, and somehow, that just seems like the subject of a Twilight Zone episode or something.
I keep wanting to fit thoughts and ideas into a narrative. I wasn’t really aware of it until this morning, but it is very difficult for me to listen to anyone talk for an extended period of time without my mind drifting off on to some tangental narrative. I had no idea how much I did this until I was sitting at my computer listening to an old message from Crosspoint about personal baggage. As Pete spoke about situations where trust is broken, my imagination took every example and began creating stories with it. In a matter of seconds, I had created characters and placed them in situations and I watched these characters, in my mind, as their actions effected on another. I have no idea why I do this. When this happens, I have little “wake up” moments where I realize that my mind has drifted and I missed whatever was said for the past several minutes.
Perhaps this is an extension of something similar that I experienced as a child. In school, I was a major daydreamer. I could space out for long periods of time as teachers taught. I could stare out the window and imagine little adventures and conversations…. hmmm, I haven’t thought about this before, but a lot of what I imagine is conversations. It appears that a great deal of my narratives are like some intellectual indie film, full of heady dialog. Perhaps I use this to reason, to sort out information, or to weigh the validity of ideas. At the moment, it isn’t really clear to me. This is something I am going to have to think about.
Does your mind drift? Do you find yourself daydreaming often? If so, why do you think that happens? What is so interesting about the stories in your own head?
