Finally: A revelation

[Sunne]

I can't begin to describe how it feels to finally recognise my experiences of excessive daydreaming as something that is so damaging. I have daydreamed for about 50% of my waking life from the time I can remember; it is normally characterised by my excessive pacing, exercising and is normally accompanied by music. In fact it seems music was the original trigger. I would create these elaborate music videos with myself as the singer, listening to my parents  album or sets of albums, this would sometimes encompass my entire day; I then moved on to recreating imaginary cities and entire film plots in my head, this would take up 2/3 of my summer holidays. I then graduated to imagining myself in fully fledged careers in acting, directing, music, and writing, sometimes a combo of all four, utilising my own interests fused with pop culture to recreate a past, present and future life of my imaginary selves.  Novels, non-fiction, and from about 11 onwards the internet, would all provide and still provide glorious fuel for my daydreams. While I recognise the many positive aspects ,this rich inner world has provided me with, such as an outlet for my creativity, a forum for inventive thinking and problem solving, all of which helped me prosper academically at school and at University, it also been an huge hindrance. It takes up so much time, that I’m often left doing things at the last minute, always feel like I’m catching up with my work, am always behind deadlines, and I think to some people , I come across as lazy or not giving a damn, which I promise ,is far from the truth! It has also wrecked havoc with simple life tasks like paying bills on time and made me disengage from social situations. I have never bothered to explain this to anyone before, and used to think I could just snap out of it and get on with tasks. Yet it isn’t that easy! I am lucky to have great friends and live in the beautiful city of Sydney (which is a great joint for daydreaming!), and have noticed if I go out and do things, and plan social gatherings, it is less excessive and am less likely to daydream during the day; but I can’t go out every night! I suppose the trick is to engage more with things you feel passionate about in the real world, which is something I have started to do, but it is a work in progress. Anyways, after that long ramble, it’s so great to meet other people that can relate to this!

[Bibby]

Your story is so similar to mine.  I've just recently found this site and it's a big relief to know I'm not alone with this.  I'm not sure how things will end up for me, but I hope I can take back my time so I can do some real living.

[Sunne]

I think you can always take back the time, there’s so much more time to be had! I don't think  I need to give up my day dreams entirely (most ppl do daydream anyways, not just as excessivley or lucidly as us), as they can provide so many bright spots of original thought and lateral thinking in our lives, but maybe the key is making it work for us. If I must day dream, i have tried to start to integrate my daydreams into my own  work, or other issues that require attn in my life, so that these "daydream worlds" can become templates to help solve my real world problems or flesh out my unformed ideas. I'll admit it doesn't always work for me and can be a trigger for even more unrelated and bigger daydreams; but sometimes it does  (though not as often as I like), and when that happens its a great motivator for my actuall task  at hand and i acn actually be vey productive. It's a start, I say!