Should You Stop Daydreaming?
I daydream instead of writing. It gets me in trouble, I don’t get a lot of writing done, but I do have a vivid imagination.
I could daydream all day. The problem is I lack focus. Does that make me just a daydreamer or a writer?
I can be obsessed with one thing all day. Like one day I became obsessed with us winning the lottery and I looked at which houses we would buy on Realtor.com. All day long I did this. I do that about once a month.
Then the obsession with an object that I just think I need. I researched it, looked at every single review, imagined it in my life, imagined it not in my life and how empty I felt.
I worried about how much it costs and rationalized that we can’t afford it so I shouldn’t buy it. Then I talked myself into buying it because I can use a credit card and really, that’s not money, that’s like winning the lottery, you can buy whatever you want.
Except for a house.
I waited for it to get here. I looked up the tracking number 20 times a day to see if my package had moved an inch.
I wondered if the thing I couldn’t live without is going to arrive in the morning so I can spend the whole day touching it or is it going to show up at night so I stay up into the early morning admiring it.
Then a week later it is balanced atop the pile of junk I just had to have.
I wish I could have that kind of obsession for writing. Maybe it comes with time. Like developing a daily writing habit, which I don’t have right now, but I’m working on.
A writing habit would give me the same gratification, once I get to the point that it gets easier, and to the equivalent of hitting the buy button.
Or I convince my self that that high and anticipation could be the same as publishing something or submitting it to a publication and waiting.
Except that buying something and building the anticipation is so much easier than thinking and writing and editing and submitting and possibly being rejected.
That quick fix, buying and obsessing over something, covers up the fact that my life is an utter mess right now…
