Daydreaming

Daydreaming has gotten me into trouble more than once. As a kid, a teacher tripped over me while carrying paint and blamed my inattentiveness and daydreaming for the accident. As an adult, I've lived with my fantasies but done very little to make them come true.

When I moved to Los Angeles I used to fantasize about what my life would be like living out here. I thought I'd love the city and I'd find a big fancy job where I would dress up every day and be surrounded by creative people who were pursuing their dreams. 

When I went off to school I used to dream about what life would be like in college. I'd work hard all day and party all night surrounded by the most intelligent people I'd ever met, make great friends, have fantastic romances, and discover myself.

When I was in grade school I used to imagine who I might be when I became a teenager. My goal was to be anyone other than who I currently was. Everyone seemed exotic and the possibilities were endless.

The possibilities are still endless, but it's becoming clearer to me that hard word is just as important as having the dream if I want to make it happen. I wanted to be a pianist--I needed to practice. I wanted to be likable--I needed to be a friend to others.  I wanted to be successful--I needed to work hard. I wanted to be a writer--I needed to write. 

I achieved some of these but not others. I have expectations for myself but the daydreaming (that I seem to do constantly) isn't useful in the least when it comes to doing those things that I need to do in order to achieve the success I crave.

It's sad really. I'll miss the daydreams about being a big-shot editor who drives a sports car and wears fancy outfits every day. I'll miss dreaming about how I'd furnish my mansion or designing my ideal library. This is not to say that I'll never do these things again. But never again can I allow these fantasies to take over the time I should be spending doing.

There's a book called The Reality Bug (within the Pendragon series by DJ MacHale) that depicts a place where a vivid virtual reality machine is developed and everyone can live within their own imagined reality where everything goes their way all the time and anything can happen. Of course, the problem was that no one saw the need to live in the real world with its ups and downs when they could jump into a fantasy world where everything is always up, never down. 

It's a dangerous thing, to become so infatuated with an imaginary reality and never to strive to change your true reality.