What did you call it?

[Larry]

Just thought'd it be interesting to see what everybody called their behaviors and experiences before Dr. Somer coined the term "Maladaptive Daydreaming".

As for me, I call it "speeding".

It seems to me that the daydreams start as slowly revolving images in my mind, and that after adding stimulants to super charge my mind and body, the pictures begin spinning until they congeal into motion pictures that I have total control over.

Of course my pacing is pacing, but the objects I toss in the air are called "flibberdeejibbetts" regardless of what they are. My favorite of these are a 3/4 inch socket wrenches. It's got the perfect feel and weight. Though in a pinch, I can make a cigarette lighter work.

During my teen years at the Northstar house, I would whack a tennis ball with a racquet up against the garage door for hours and days on end.
In the sweltering heat and the freezing cold. I routinely shared that space with a number of gnarly big wolf spiders and the occasional mouse. I never had any interest in the actual game.

I called this "flibberdeejibbett-ing".

The one self-named habit I had, which has been the most influential, has been what I would learn was called "ruminating". 

My "other" brother(long story) and I, in our mid teens to early twenties, would go up into the foothills, either just us or with small group of other guys, and build a small bonfire, and proceed to pickle our livers.

Man....when that beer hit my ruminating mind it was "on like donkey kong".

I'd get all philosophical and feeling intellectual and stand up around the fire and start blurting out sermons to the other drunkards on subjects like history, philosophy, and politics.... like I was some kind of wobbly  preacher on a stump pulpit.
The guys thought me quite the entertaining fool and encouraged it.

I can't remember if one of them coined the term or if I did, but "Beer Can  Poet" stuck.
I use it as a nickname in everything I do on the Internet (except here, ironically)
My ruminations are"beer can poetry".

Even now, I still prefer to be known as a "beer can poet"  than a "Maladaptive Daydreamer".

Obviously, you don't have to be as bloody long winded as me, but I think it'd be interesting seeing how else it was being described.

[General Foolishness]

I called it "active daydreaming."

[OhMyMagenta]

When I was younger, I used to have a pair of those large can headphones that completely encased my ears. This did two things for me: the noise cancelation would make it easier to daydream & if I happened to engage in any movements/verbalizations I could just say I was singing or acting out a vid. So whenever I wanted to daydreams, I'd just say to my mom that I was 'going under the headphones'.

[darmody]

As I titled my blog post about it, I refer to my daydreaming as "playing with strings," because that's how I do it. I don't think I came up with that phrase; that's just how we've always referred to it in my family. 

[Dreamcatcher]

I just called it "walking around" because that's exactly what I did when daydreaming most of the time, though I also daydreamed while lying down, sitting down, in the shower, during conversations...pretty much 24/7. But walking/pacing around was the most "special" time set aside to daydream, where I could completely immerse myself, skipping around to my music

[SwanInTheWater]

I thought I was playing pretend with imaginary friends. I really beat myself up about it too. Imaginary friends is for pre-schoolers. Well come to find out, I never had imaginary friends, I was DDing even at 3, 4 years old. It was always a private thing that went on in my head.

[Kay M]

I just called them writing stories or drawing pictures, even though I didn't do much writing stories, I never managed more than a few lines unless I was writing things about how the setting works, and all of my drawings were information related, like drawing maps and charts.

[Valeria]

• Is funny because I was thinking that I didn't have a name for it, but then I recalled that when I was 12 I wrote in my diary it was the Rainbow World in which everything was perfect.