It’s kinda surprising but for this 30 year old imagination is my primary form of entertainment. Add everything up and I use my imagination more then I watch TV, surf the internet or anything.
I use it on the bus ride to work. My job is easy so I get to use it all day as I work. In fact I used it to make this post several times to find out how I should go about it. And I really look forward to going to bed as it means about 30 to 40 minutes of uninterrupted fun.
I think i really got good at it by reading which I did a lot as a teen. As I read it seems as though I can actually see and hear the characters. My brain just automatically adds everything not included in the words. Now I’m good enough that it seems quite real while I’m using it. Although the more complicated the story the more fragile things get.
What I think of runs the gamut from action/adventure, sci-fi, fantasy, romance, occasionally porn and even just plain everyday life. Some are short little one offs but others are big sprawling things. In fact I’ve got one that I’ve regularly dipped into that I’ve been building for about 8 years. It covers some 13,000 years (I’m 2500 years old at the end of that time) and could probably fill a dozen big fat novels. Sometimes I get into it enough to feel the motions of flying as I do stuff like that.
Usually it’s all about me but sometimes I’m not even there. After “Attack of the Clones” came out I refilmed Star Wars as a 27 episode movie trilogy of trilogy of trilogies(ANH = 12, SWHS = 13, ESB = 14, RotJ = 15). I love my Obi Wan/Anakin battle and will still occasionally work on it. Plus my reasoning for Anakin turning make much more sense. I made a series of movies featuring Valiant and Valiant from Roger Rabbit. As well as several original series.
One of the best times I had was when I imagined I was a time traveler. I visited ancestors, played some rock n roll in the past and went far enough back to talk to various historical luminaries. Roaming around Rome was a blast.
So is this so unusual? Should I be embarrassed? Anyone else use it? If you do what kinda stuff do you day dream up?
Quite a bit. As a wannabe writer, I spend a lot of time imagining stories. I often stop in the middle of a book and imagine what I would do or what I would want the character to do (one reason I prefer books to TV or movies.)
I’ve only managed to get a few short stories down onto paper but I have several more in my head mostly worked out, along with a couple novels in various states of completion just building up, waiting to poor through a keyboard onto a page.
Most of the books I’ve read are so vivid in my head that there are times I’ll really think it was a movie I saw instead and I’ll be suprised that it’s just a book. … This has led to some bitter dissapointments when seeing a movie after reading a book, so I’ve learned to mentally seperate them before seeing a movie. If I tell myself that its only a coincidence I’m seeing a movie of the same name as a book I read, then I have a chance of enjoying the movie.
ALL the time. I , too, am a wannabe writer, and constantly have ideas rolling around in my brain. I hear whole conversations between my characters in my head. I would go nuts without my imagination. (Or is hearing voices in my head a sign that I already am ??)
I try to exercise it as much as possible; in a limited capacity, my job requires it; I’m in IT development and support, so I have to imagine ways of solving problems and imagine the kind of problems that might give rise to a particular observed set of symptoms.
A lot of my non-professional ‘work’ ventures also require it; comedy writing, graphic design, video and audio editing, amateur dramatics production, etc.
Purely recreationally, I enjoy imagination and pondering immensely; it’s part of the reason that I cannot ever get seriously drunk and remain happy; a couple of drinks are great - even stimulating, as I can let my thoughts wander a little more freely with less conscious inhibition, but ‘proper’ drunkenness is truly wretched - I can feel my mind shutting down and I hate it.
I read voraciously as a child and even more as an adult. I think that reading stimulates the imagination more than we will ever know. When I read, I see the story happening; it’s not just words on a page.
And I teach others to use their imagination in Taekwondo through visualization drills.
I make up stories every night because it’s the only way I can get to sleep. Reading never worked; I get too involved.
So it’s stories…usually about my future, but sometimes I make up stories about other people.
For a while I was stuck on the “Winning the Lottery” plot. I don’t just imagine what I’d do with the money, oh no, too negative for that. I create entire novels based on the problems the money could generate.
When I was a kid I always played the three wishes game but I had elaborate rules. Probably came from growing up in the Bewitched/Jeannie era.
Can I just say I am SO GLAD to hear that I’m not the only one that spends so much time on make-believe?
I’m always using my imagination. It can be anything from thinking of a story, to planning out what I’m going to say in my inaugural address. (Don’t you dare laugh.)
I can daydream while watching a movie. I do it while working, while driving, while eating, while trying to fall asleep. I think much of my problem with the world comes from the fact that real life seems so dull and boring in comparison.
One of my biggest problems is that often, in finding a way to make “something” possible, I get so tangled up in the backstory that I forget to get back to the main action. Okay, so I’m suddenly on vacation in Europe where something truly amazing is going to happen to me–but how did I get there? Who paid for the trip? Did I take time off work? Am I out of vacation days? Who drove me to the airport?
I have characters that I’ve played around with ever since I can remember. There are a wide variety of personalities and I have done many different things with them. Right now I use them mostly for porn, but it’s porn with a plot.
I am always imagining things, I never stop thinking.
Lately I have been imagining myself in my own house. I frequently imagine winning the $10,000 Main Event at World Series of Poker in Vegas. I always imagine a great round of golf.
In all seriousness, my golf instructor told me to imagine playing a course in my head the night before I play, because it helps you play better. It works to an extent. I have horrible stamina.
All the time. My job is mostly mindless physical repetition (making sandwiches, soups, peelin’ taters, etc.) so I’m always thinking/imagining/just turning things over in my brain to see what shakes out.
If I’m left to amuse myself with no TV, no Internet, no music, etc., within a few minutes I’ll invariably start laughing out loud at the stuff I’m making up in my head. My wife seems alternately amused and disturbed by this.
Have you (or anyone) ever read The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson? There’s a digital book in the novel that contains a layered story that opens up new storylines when questioned about some detail (it’s owned by a little girl, so there are a lot of “but why?” kinds of questions), that not only richen the main story but are interesting on their own. That book comes as close as anything to describing how my (and probably not a few others’) imagination works.
But yeah, I use my imagination a lot. And even write parts of it down sometime (I am nearly finished with a novel). The problem is that once I commit something to paper, I lose interest in it, my mind goes somewhere else. Which is why I have nearly a hundred partially completed short stories (and two partially completed novels) but only a handful of finished ones. Once it’s down it becomes rigid and stale and not imaginative. Not cool.
