Daydreams

About daydreams

"Daydreaming is the stream of consciousness that detaches from current, external tasks when attention drifts to a more personal and internal direction. When thoughts move to a different place while daydreaming it’s referred to as mind wandering. This commonality affects individuals 50% of the time while awake."

Got that straight out of wikipedia. Daydreams, as defined by oxford dictionary, are "a series of pleasant thoughts that distract one's attention from the present." Pretty much to the point. From the outside looking in, It's probably a bit strange to give a topic like this a shrine. Yet, I think daydreams are a pretty big part of me, and the kind of person I am. At the moment of typing this at least. Hard to say how my time with daydreaming will be years from now, or whenever I inevitably start therapy (hopefully sooner rather than later).

I daydream...alot. Everyday. Every night. On my way to work. At work. Leaving work. 9 times out of 10, with music as well. My earliest memories of daydreaming were always coppled with me having some sort of song I not only enjoyed, but had an emotional attachment too. This was around like...middle school? Hell, If I had some time to really delve into it, I may have started sometime in my late years of elementary school. I do believe my use of the internet aided in it though.

The thing is, I don't just daydream. I am far past just "daydreaming". What more explains what I do is something called "Maladaptive Daydreaming". Daydreaming on like, overdrive. To the most unhealthy extent. I talk about it more in a later section but, yea

IMPORTANT: For me to like...really get into how I daydream, what usually helps, what aids in how intense they can get and how visually stimulating, I'd have to be pretty open about me in general, so yea. It may get heavy.

Personal daydreams/"The Cabin"

For as long as I can truly remember, there has been one specific location that will always pop up in all my daydreams. As of recently, I've been trying to actively avoid it. It will still slide it's way in though.

A cabin in the woods. It's been the very same cabin for like...over a decade now. Same dirt road entrance from a semi-busy road litered with large pine trees. Same porch with a screen door on the far left of the front of the house. Same entrance. You're immediately greeted by the living room. Two couches. One to your immediate right with it's back facing you. Another in front of a window giving you a view of the entire front of the house and whoevers car is parked out. A decent Tv setup (that's a recent addition from the last year or so. Strange, I know) that's located across from the couch nearest you. Walking past this, you are greeted with a small hallway, that if walked through leads you directly to the kitchen. Pretty basic layout. Small coffee table with two chairs on the right walking in. Wooden counter, stove on the left wall and a barely working fridge. Sometimes there's a home phone sitting on the wall right next to the left counter, but that depends on the daydream plot point. There's a sliding glass window that leads to the backyard. It lets in a lot of light, and trust me, I wish I could draw out what I'm saying but I just...don't have the skills for that. Taking a few steps back though, we come to the hallway. Facing towards the living room now, there is a staircase leads upward, and a door on the right that...leads downward. Ignore that for now though, cause we're going up. It brings you to another hallway leading to your right as you make your way to the top. You walk past the bathroom to your left to make your way to the one bedroom in the house directly infront of you. You open the door, and boom. The most room-looking room you've ever seen. (Believe it or not, the room is pretty new as well. Originated from a music video I daydreamed for this song.) King-sized bed. Another window looking out into the front of the house, and this time you can kinda see the road through the trees. A small counter...yea. You get it.

Now, I'm sure you enjoyed that entire paragraph of me detailing a fucking cabin in the middle of like...washington I think? Yea, I'm pretty sure that's the canon location of the cabin, but remember when I brought up that door near the staircase? The one that went down? Well, what if I told you that it led you down a large staircase, bringing you to a cluttered room of computers that lead to another door that held, and I'm not joking-

a large circular time traveling contraption.

Yes. No, I'm not lying. I think we can all agree this is alot of effort for a pretty bland time traveling bit. What would the bit even be? Anyway, yea. If I had to really think about where that came from? I think gravity falls. Remember that big thing that Grunkle Stan held under the store? The one behind the vending machine? Yea, that's where that came from.

Now that I'm really looking at this scene from gravity falls, this is fairly close to how the chamber holding the time portal looks, except with another small lil area holding a computer module for imputting whatever mess you want to do with the contraption. Now....I'm sure your curious how this even came about and to be completely real with you, It probably just slowly manifested with me even realizing it lmao. Which may be a tad bit concerning, but hey, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Now, besides this cabin, many of my daydreams do deal with sadder topics, But I'll discuss those as well some other time.

Update (October 16th)

I don't think I mentioned that I genuinely talk to myself. I'm scrolling through the text and uh, yep. Don't think I do. When I say "talk to myself" I mean it in the most literal sense. I do conversate with myself. When I'm alone. Might be in my head or I could straight up start making sounds that aren't actually coming out of my mouth. What does that mean? I'll talk but not open my mouth basically. Sounding out words and all that, but it just sounds like noises if you're walking past me. Mhm.

My mom is aware of this. A few weeks ago, I don't know. One of our many "You need to get your life together" conversations. It somehow got to me always being alone in my room. What I do. Yadda yadda. I just told the truth. Even I was surprised. I lie alot.

She's pretty adament on getting me a therapist now. So, neat. If that does happen (I say if only because well, there's alot that needs to be dealt with finacially before a therapist comes into the picture) I'll maybe document that all here. I know, psycho notes. Fun.

Maladaptive Daydreaming

"Maladaptive daydreaming is a behavior where a person spends an excessive amount of time daydreaming, often becoming immersed in their imagination. This behavior is usually a coping mechanism in people who have mental health conditions like anxiety. For some people, this behavior disrupts work, hobbies or friendships and relationships."

Got that from the cleveland clinics website. I remember when I first heard about this term, I think it was through a meme? Honestly, thought it sounded cool. Made me feel a bit "unique". I felt very creative whenever I did daydream. Like "hey, look at these beautiful worlds and storylines I can build in my head." Makes me feel like I can create movies, music videos (almost implied with how much I utilize music with them), hell, almost any kind of creative platform. Which sounds great since I love creating! Graphic design and photography were my thing, but my brain has always considered being a videographer. Alas, I'd daydream really amazing careers for myself. I'd daydream fun scenarios for me to be in. I'd daydream as a superhero. A man flying down from a rusty propellor plane as he splits through the clouds and finds himself hovering above a jarring warzone with no end in sight. There were truly, no limits. The beauty of an active imagination. I felt good coming up with these scenarios and running them in my head, it's like being a filmmaker with zero restrictions. Every shot is possible. Nothing is offlimits. True expression.

Then I scrolled down to who it affects.

"Maladaptive daydreaming is most common in people with conditions that affect their mental health or certain types of brain functions. The conditions that are common with maladaptive daydreaming are: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Anxiety disorders. Certain types of depression. Dissociative disorders. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)."

Hm. Alright. This is starting to feel like one big self-diagnosis party. It made me feel weird though. Cause like, hey, how could something so cool and "helpful" be this jarring and potentially an issue for like...my mind. They go on to further explain symptoms, issues,etc. Taking form in "Disruption of social activities, Interference in work, hobbies, or other pursuits, Compulsively Daydreaming.." the list went on and on. So I ignored it.

I looked into this, for the first time, before the pandemic. I think we can all guess if I got worse or better after the shutdown and everything that followed. Revisiting it today while I type all this, it's become far more accurate. Which, you know, is not a good thing lol. I've made it a point to seek out therapy soon and update this section with whatever new stuff I figure out about myself and this whole daydreaming thing whenever I'm able too. I would really like to hopefully feel like I'm not working against myself 24/7. I'd like to really do something about this.

Connections to music

It's no secret I love music. I have a whole damn shrine for it already. Me liking music so much isn't really the point here though. It's more the way I use music. I don't think there's a song I don't create some sort of small music video for in my head, even if i'm not the biggest fan of the song itself. I can still daydream without music, but they are never as viceral or as intense. The intensity and realism of the daydream comes from my connection to the song. Sometimes I'll just take a full soundtrack from a movie and work with that. Those, for me, are the most fun to mess with. Movies like Interstellar or Amélie or even the Social Network have these really intense and beautiful soundtracks that just work so well with creating these worlds and just...

Everytime I find a new artist, sometimes it hangs in the idea of like "huh, is there enough emotion in this to reeeeally create something good off of?" or like "what kind of story could I make from this?" Would a song like dead sun by moby always give off this very dreadful feeling of watching over the death of a believed and important protagonist? Or could I give it a different meaning? What if I applied a song like All I need by Radiohead to a live concert? Putting myself in the shoes of thom yorke, belting out those final screams at the end of the song to a harrowingly large stadium, drowning in the millions of lights swirling around me as they cut at the last note. Do these all have to be melodramatic though? No. But that's the problem. Most of my favorite daydreams seem to occur at night. No, not 9pm night. 2am night. It's troubling, obviously, but like I said. I like it. It helps me get through the day just as much as music itself.

How do I feel about all this?

Daydreams, as far as I remember, always made me feel safe. Getting to create worlds and stories from my own life experiences, or even experiences that I wish I did have. It's my own personal fantasy.

It's also a detrimint to my own progress in real life. No real shocker that imagining I was doing okay in life is easier than actually being okay in life. Imagining a very intense and almost real conversation with made up friends, is easier than the real thing happening when you have none. I'm sure my therapist will be very happy to know I've already done the work for them. I know this feels like one big self-psychoanalysis project but, I just never put things into words. Ideas. Feelings. Thoughts. I never put them on paper. Every year that passes by I kick myself for not creating something like this to put my thoughts out into the world. I don't know why I thought social media was a good place to do that when deep down I just wanted a certain amount of likes from a certain amount of people who's opinions I cared about more than anything. It's really depressing. Doesn't hurt anyone but me.

Imagine I posted these thoughts for all my old high school classmates to see. They wouldn't care. I feel that I scream into the void on apps like twitter or instagram on a daily basis. Never learning my lesson. So I guess putting these thoughts out into a website that I may forget about in a year or two feels better somehow. I'm slowly getting off topic but, as of me writing this, I'm not doing well. I've really derailed my life to a point that I'm not sure I can recover from. When things get so bad that you look forward to having time at night for your thoughts to freely become something. Anything. It's nice.

Why wouldn't I create a daydream for myself to be happy? Just makes sense.