I’ve Only Just Begun To Daydream

I trust that the above statement is not 100 percent accurate.

I imagine I was a daydreamer as a child. I have to imagine that I spent many hours daydreaming about anything and everything. But that was so long ago, and those memories are stored deeply or lost forever.

Beach umbrella. Makarksa, Croatia

Honestly, I can’t recall much daydreaming happening as an adult: some, but not much.

Maybe someone once told me it was a waste of time, and I believed them.

Perhaps I was told not to daydream in class/at home/at church, and, being an obedient kid, I listened, obeyed, and so I stopped.

Once I stopped daydreaming, I stopped creating, exploring and hoping. I left the canvas blank. I did what the adults told me to do. And I created what I was told to create. And instead of it being a good thing, it was probably one of the worst things I could have done. Thanks, adults.

Since I can’t spend forever and a day blaming the adults, I thought I would try this whole daydreaming thing.

It has not been easy. I did a great job of training my mind to avoid daydreaming.

What the actual #$%!

And here I am, well into my forties, retraining my mind to daydream. Retraining my mind to create, explore, to hope.

And you know what? While it’s been challenging, it has also been fun.

I daydream about the perfect backhand I will deliver on the tennis court. I daydream about hiking in Ireland. I daydream about the people I would like to meet. I daydream about building my own home.

There are still many things I can’t bring myself to daydream about.

Not because they are weird but because retraining my mind takes time. Seeing infinite possibilities in this so-called life still seems foreign, new, or heavy.

Yes, all of those things, and yes, all at once.

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