Introduction AKA Hello world! Nice to meet ya!

[Spotted Shadow]

***That moment when you sign up on this site years ago and haven't actually said a thing until now.

ugh I had one job how hard is it to talk to people mother of--

Hello! My fake internet name's Spotted Shadow! Feel free to call me... anything(?) you can come up with as a shortened version of that; Spot, Spotty, Spotted, Shady, Shadow, or  the whole thing Spotted Shadow, hell you can type it backwards as Wodahs Dettops and use it, I really don't care. Whatever may float your boat. Or use Heather. My real first name. You can just say "Hey, You!" for all I care! Go crazy.

So... Now for that part where I blab about myself...

I'm bad at this.   Not surprised, really, but still...

I'm female, seventeen years old, live in the US. Because stalkers exist, I'd rather not say which state, but here's a hint; it's the best state! (That's right; FIGHT OVER  WHICH IT IS MUAHAHAHA) I'm something of an artist; I use a variety of visual mediums, (pencils, pens, colored pencils, watercolor, oil pastels, oil paints, wood burning, stained glass), I write song lyrics/poetry, (occasionally I also write music for the song lyrics), and lots of stories. Unfortunately, only my poems/songs are finished, every story I have, be it original or fanfiction, is very much in-progress. I love animals, and my current pets include my cat, three quail, and one (lonely) shrimp. I've got scoliosis, wore a brace for it for several years, which was entertaining in a variety of ways, and I also have Social Anxiety. Not that anyone but me and my closest confidant are actually aware, but hey it's chill.

But obviously there is one more big, huge, important aspect of me as a person that you probably already knew. Because without it, I wouldn't know this site existed. Maladaptive Daydreaming. Hooray! I'd assume that anyone who bothered to read this just wants me to get to the juicy part, (The part contains information relevant to MD), so here you go:

I've been daydreaming like this in one form or another for as long as I can remember, although I can say with certainty that it has gotten much more in-depth and elaborate as the years go on. It used to just be when I was playing pretend as a small child, alone or with my family members; little harmless daydreams that sort of expanded past the game. Then I can remember still being very small, driving anywhere with my parents and daydreaming along with whatever CDs or tapes (anyone remember those, lol?) that were playing, which only got more prominent when my parents got me my first mp3 player for my birthday many years back. Then every single car ride became a time to daydream. I because to enjoy accompanying my mother on errands because I could dream, but of course I'd whine about reaching the destination and being dragged out of the car. I'd also daydream a little while watching movies and such.

Now I dedicate each bus ride to and from high school to daydreaming, as well as the 20 minutes before classes start, and the five minutes in between each. If anyone interrupts me because I'm "just listening to music" I get really aggressive, but can usually hide it. Now I've got my license and I blast my music to daydream to on my commutes to and from work. (And I must say, dreaming and driving is a weird, potentially dangerous experience...) I have to dream every day or it feels like I'll explode. If I don't set aside time to dream that's controlled, then I'll end up dreaming uncontrollably when I should be concentrating on something else, and it's incredibly hard to stop it. I pace for hours, which has done wonders for my previously non-existent leg muscles, let me just say, alone in a room upstairs with my headphones on. I dream in bed until I fall asleep at night, or until it becomes really involved and suddenly I'm not in bed anymore and I'm pacing in my room, laughing to myself because I know I look like an idiot and I'm overtired. I'll watch a movie, video, or read a book, and half to stop in the middle, pace around like a manic, and then settle down again. My family thinks that shutting myself away to pace is odd and rather amusing, but they certainly aren't worried about it. Good for me. I also can project characters into the real world fairly well, and they help me when life gets stressful or boring or I need a push to do something I'm afraid of. I have to be brave, because I know they're watching and I can't bear to let them down. Sometimes they can help me pay more attention, for example, I had a really boring teacher for a subject one year, and I swapped them out for one of my favorite characters and pretended that they were teaching the lesson. It worked.

Daydreaming eats my time, but it gives me such much in return. As an artist, my creativity can skyrocket, and it takes a lot to get me truly bored or lonely. It helps me through life when things get rough, and I spend hours laughing with my imagined friends at our imagined jokes. And sometimes I tell my real life friend about it. There's so much going on that it's impossible to give her a good explanation, but I try my best, because she's one of those beautiful aspects of reality that act as an anchor, holding me fast to the real world; she's too perfect to recreate in my mind, just like my family.

I'm open to answering any questions anyone has, whether it's about MD, my cat, my favorite color, how many TV show themes I have memorized, my sexuality, my favorite parasites, my preferred starters for each region of Pokémon, whatever you want to know, you need only ask. Well. Except a few Politics, religion and Star Wars vs Star Trek seem to only cause arguments... ;)

[BlackUnicorn]

Welcome Shady :D

Woow you managed to tell a friend and make her understand? I mean at least so far that she doesn't think you're completely insane?^^ And your family knows that you pace around your room? I only do that when I'm in the middle of a very strong DD and no one's at home.

Getting your friends to help you concentrate sounds like a good strategy. But for me it's pretty hard to project them into reality. I usually visit them "over there".

What are you dreaming about? What are your favourite topics or any plots you repeat?

[Source]

That list of things you do and use as creativity outlets for your daydreaming is impressive. I think it's good that your family knows about it without labeling you a beast of the devil or something.
Side note: do I smell memes here?

[Spotted Shadow]

Hah! Yeah, actually she finds it fascinating! (Lucky me!) She seems to what to know more about it, but God is it hard to explain! XD Yup, they know about the pacing, in fact I think they only one bothered by it is my cat; he gets really confused and even tries attacking my legs sometimes to try and get me to stop.

The vast majority of the time, I don't project, and its hard to do more than one, or for so long, so I usually just go visit them... Sometimes we kinda... break the forth wall, I guess, and discuss how depressing it is that they aren't... y'know.... real, but they don't usually appreciate that, so we change the subject fairly fast.

The way I understand it from reading things on here, most people have slightly different dreams that remain centered around one core sort of concept, usually an empowered, "better" version of themself that goes around and does things relevant to whatever triggered the dream, or at least, that's what I've gotten so far, in most cases. The easiest way I can explain mine are that they center around that better, powerful, perfect version of myself, and that all of my dreams are very, very connected. I've been weaving this dream-story for... forever, and every time I dream, I'm right back completing the chapter where I left off, or branching out and finalizing some other space in the middle of the timeline. At the end of the day, it's the same story, I'm just writing out different parts of it at different times. Hopefully that makes sense(?)

BlackUnicorn said:

Welcome Shady :D

Woow you managed to tell a friend and make her understand? I mean at least so far that she doesn't think you're completely insane?^^ And your family knows that you pace around your room? I only do that when I'm in the middle of a very strong DD and no one's at home.

Getting your friends to help you concentrate sounds like a good strategy. But for me it's pretty hard to project them into reality. I usually visit them "over there".

What are you dreaming about? What are your favourite topics or any plots you repeat?

[Spotted Shadow]

Well, I've had many years to practice! (And if I never found those outlets there's a good chance I'd've gone nuts) Yeah, thankfully they don't seem to think it's too evil. I was always weird, so I think at this point they're just desensitized to any more weird I can dish out XD

Oh yes. There are memes. Too many memes. Be careful, or you might drown in them.

Source said:

That list of things you do and use as creativity outlets for your daydreaming is impressive. I think it's good that your family knows about it without labeling you a beast of the devil or something.
Side note: do I smell memes here?