hi! this is an introduction and explanation post!

[Paige E.]

hi everyone! I've been debating making a profile here for a while now. I'll start with a little bit about myself-- my name is Paige, I'm eighteen years old and headed off to college in just over a week. my major is animation, I was accepted into a very nice art school in California with a hefty scholarship, and I'm super excited. the down side is that it's also my catalyst for joining this community. I promised myself I'd be very, very honest here, so here comes an embarrassing summary of my issue with MDD. I've never divulged much of this to anyone before, it's something of a shameful secret.

I've been daydreaming for as long as I can remember, but I suppose it only became maladaptive sometime during middle school. it didn't interfere with my social life until around my first year of high school, though, so I was about fourteen. my daydreams are highly repetitive, and I pace or walk about when I have them.

being an artist with a focus in character design, it's easy to pour a lot of my condition into my work. much of my drawings and characters are actually recurring figures in my daydreams! it's actually helped my creative drive quite a lot. I probably wouldn't be where I am now artistically and scholastically without MDD. I'm involved in a small online art community with about twenty or so other artists whom I consider myself quite close with, and we weave stories together and illustrate them. my best friend and I in particular have constructed a whole world full of strange people and mythos and stories, and we're hoping to turn it into a published comic or other illustrative series someday. it's great fun, but it also fuels my daydreaming. characters from the stories are a large feature in my daydreams and I tend to only daydream about them meeting each other. it's not much of a self-insertion thing, actually, I just hash out potential scenarios for these characters to meet and mingle over and over and over, slightly different every time. it's a miracle I'm not sick of it, but the endless supply of new characters and material helps.

about one or two of my friends know about my problem, and not in much detail. I daydream 'best' at home, by walking in these little half-circles around my bedroom. walks outside also help, but not to the same degree. I spend quite a lot of time doing this, often taking breaks to draw or chat with friends. unfortunately, it's at the point where I feel I need a bit of this each day in order to feel stable, so I find myself at times avoiding the company of others in order to daydream alone. I do suffer from major depression and generalized anxiety disorder and these problems are agitated when I can't find time to daydream.

I'll be living in an apartment soon, with three other girls, all of whom are art students as well. they're very nice and I'm excited but also scared about having to curb my habit among other people. I worry I'll feel very restless. I find that when I forego daydreaming, I get either antsy or very, very bored. maybe I'll just have to find a lot of distractions? I hope schoolwork will keep me busy. maybe I can pour myself into my art and see where that takes me. I almost wonder if the forced deprivation will be beneficial. I'd like to get it under control but not remove it from myself completely. I've been relying on this mechanism for years now, but I can still remember a time not that long ago when it didn't feel absolutely necessary and it wasn't a way of coping, so maybe there's still hope for me yet?

anyway, it's really really good to be here. I'm happy to finally be opening up about this and I hope I can find a few people who understand what I'm feeling. I might post a bit of art sometime, show people the sort of characters that inhabit my dream world.

it's nice to meet you all! sorry for any weird errors, I'm pretty nervous.

[Paige E.]

okay! time to finally respond to these. if there's a reply function I have no idea how it works so hopefully at least one of you will see this or the couple of minutes I'm gonna spend typing it will be for naught

@Matthew - I do commissions! dunno if you'd be much interested in my work, though. I mostly draw women and my style's more western. you can see my latest blog post for a couple images, although I do draw in a wealth of styles. I kind of have to, for school and all. I'll keep a look out for M. Hunter but he's probably better than I am haha

@Daniel - I don't mean pacing outside, I mean just walking about normally. I don't act things out in public, I can just listen to music and wander around. treadmills are bad for me because I space out and trip. I'm about as coordinated as a baby deer. (they're good for exercise though, I like to run)

@Michelle - I'm trying to retrain myself to only DD before bed at night (in the minutes before I fall asleep while I'm in bed) and while running errands/walking around town. frankly, though, I've felt no real urge to DD since I've been here. I honestly don't really want it to be gone for good. it's a large chunk of my creative impetus. so far I've been doing well, though. 

[daniel glickman]

hello. I think its amazing you can find a good use to your daydream and make art out of them..im kinda jelly hehe

im trying to write a story based on my DDs but im too lazy;/

anyway i think you cant dd as well when pacing out side is because you worry other people may look and you have to notice your environment so you dont bump into things lol so you cant really zone out of the real world and into your dreams..maybe you could walk on a treadmill so it seems normal and you dont have to mind your environment or just pace back and forth somewhere outside