Stuck in my mind
Today, I think I should address one of my most terrible yet amazing habit – daydreaming. I don’t know when my endless daydreaming has started. I remember myself always doing it regardless of what I was doing or where I was. My parents thought it was just a childhood phase when I started thinking of those crazy stories that never made sense and started running around and act like I’m in a different world with different people and creatures. Turns out, it wasn’t simply a phase. It was and still is my life. As I grew up, my daydreaming’s stories became more complex and some of them began to interlace. That was how I got my first novel.
When I first took on writing, it was a bit difficult to move around the spider web wrapped around my mind. Every strand was a different story and it took me weeks to find how one event tied up with the others and to make all them be a part of that one book. As I persevered, it got easier. My second novel was so much easier to write even though the theme was not. I felt more connected to it because I wasn’t just scratching the surface of what’s on my mind. The story was completely fictional but yet it discussed issues I’ve been wanted to talk about to someone. Therefore, writing and daydreaming became therapeutic.
That’s how most of my stories have started. The sparks ignite slowly without me recognizing until they bloom into a full scale story with its own background and ending. None of them are ever clear on what issue they’re trying to unravel until I’m midway writing it. There’s always that one scene I write then I remember something similar that happened to me or I witnessed. From times to times, it’s not a scene from my memory but something I’ve been wanting to face or something I’ve been trying to find out how I would respond to if it was to happen.
I thought that was how it was going to stay, easy and stress-free. I began to see my daydreaming as a good thing. I’ve realized they were never senseless stories that floated in my mind. Rather, they were my subconscious dealing with the issues in my life and try to come up with solutions. The bad thing was that I spent more time daydreaming about dealing with my issues than actually dealing with them. The more I began to see daydreaming as a positive thing the more intrusive it got.
Daydreaming has cause me a lot of problems over the years especially in class. Anything happens and I’d instantly retreat inside my mind. Sometimes, it took me a while before going back to the real world. That caused me to miss information in class and parts of conversations with people. Some people think I’m rude because there were times they spoke to me or asked me a question and I just blankly stared at them. They probably thought I was paying attention to them when in fact I was miles away from where I was standing.
My friends are always asking me where I go to find inspirations for my stories. Sometimes, I come up with some fantastic stories about where and how I found inspirations from scenery and nature when in reality, they all come inside my mind. They all are fruits of those times when I’m dead silent and forgetting about my surroundings.
It’s probably not the best habit to nurture. On one hand, it helps with my creativity. On the other, it destroys my focus because it’s very hard to control nowadays. I never realize when I do it. Most times, it takes someone asking me what I’m looking at for me to realize that I’m not paying attention to what’s happening. It’s all type of embarrassing and awkward to try to come up with an answer that will not make people feel unwanted. However, it produces the best feeling when I finally can make sense of a particular story in middle of the mess and put it down on paper.
I only wish I knew how to make myself daydreaming about one particular story and only at certain times until I’m done writing it. I think that requires mastery level on daydreaming.
