The Prelude to a Mull

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering.   -Steven Wright

 On a recent walk with my son I admitted that I daydream...a lot.  Not that I get lost in reverie from time to time, but that I actively revert to a daydream whenever I can detach my mind from the monotony of the day and drift off to the fantasies floating around in my cranium.  He said that he does, too.  A chip off the old block.  Wikipedia, the repository of all knowledge on the web, says that; a daydream is a visionary fantasy, especially one of happy, pleasant thoughts, hopes or ambitions, imagined as coming to pass, and experienced while awake.  Yep, I believe that to be accurate, at least in my case.

Of course, one has to ask if daydreams are a healthy and normal activity to participate in, or should they be considered counterproductive and the mental bastion of the lazy. Historically, daydreaming was considered the latter by those who studied such things long ago, but more recently it's seen as the former.  My son and I figured that creative types like authors and movie directors must be avid daydreamers.  I think Christopher Nolan's Inception could indirectly speak to that.  Author Neil Gaiman says, "You get ideas from daydreaming.  You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time.  The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it."  I'd love to ask Stephen King if his Gunslinger Series was the product of some glorious daydreaming.  I'd bet it was.

Interestingly, a study by Eric Klinger, cited by Wikipedia, found that 75% of people in boring jobs use daydreaming to deal with the mundane.  True that, I say.  In fact, I have a couple or three I like to drift into when the time presence itself.  I tried to share my daydreams with my son on our walk, but he explained that if I were to share them and he were to criticize them that I would no longer enjoy them as before, so it was best I not to share.  I think he just didn't want to here them.  His loss.

Another interesting statistic in Eric Klinger's study is that only 5% of daydreams are of a sexual or violent nature.  When I did a Google search for daydreaming one of the top website choices was Google images and right there on the search engine page was a nude gal representing daydreaming.  5% indeed!  Actually, that was the only one I found, but I didn't go looking, either.

So, in one of my favorite daydreams I'm a vampire slayer that can slow down time to the point that I can avoid danger and dispatch the evil bloodsuckers.  I thought of that special ability before Heroes came out, so don't think I plagiarized the show.  In another daydream I'm a guy who has fused with an intergalactic parasite that lives off  the energy my body metabolizes, causing the body to waste away, while the parasite sustains body functions and renders me practically indestructible.  My only weakness is extreme heat.  I can take on any appearance by some sort of cloaking thing the parasite provides, so others don't see the emaciated me.  Also, I have no sense of smell or feeling, which sucks.  Then I go around and do good deeds.  I think that one could be a good graphic novel.  I daydream about Ten Years Gone a lot now, a fiction blog I write with my compatriot, SJ Smith.  It's a post apocalyptic love story that is peppered with mutant monsters and evil gunslingers.   Hours of good daydreaming there.  And don't worry, my son never reads this stuff, so he still won't know about my daydreams.  Again, his loss.

With that, I'll bid the dear reader farewell as I drift off to some night dreams.  Remember, it's OK to daydream, just don't do it when you wife is talking to you.  And I'd like to leave you with a quote I found that I liked and I'm sure you will too;

Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind. -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

 Good times.