Daydream Believer

There is something wonderful about creativity, in that it kind of builds on itself without you really needing to graft and put in the effort. I took a week of leave nearly a month ago to use up my remaining annual leave this leave year, and I basically had crickets in my brain. I read a lot, which was totally great, but I didn’t do much more writing than I otherwise would have with my daily blog plan.

Then the week of leave ended, and I don’t know if it was the media I was consuming, or that my brain just needed the time off to marinate in its own creative juices, but BAM, I suddenly had ideas. I had allowed myself time to dream, time to think about things that didn’t really matter, and I didn’t feel precious about having ‘products’ of my creativity labour. A month later, I’m coming up for another week of leave, with over a month of daily blog posts to build the habit, one novel sketchily outlined and another idea jotted down in my Notebook of All The Things ™, and I can’t wait.

Cheer up sleepy Jean,
Oh what can it mean
To a day dream believer and a
Homecoming queen?

This song is delightfully upbeat. I love the idea that we are all going about our daily existance, making the life we want, even if it is in daydream form. A lot of what I’ve been getting super excited about recently feels a lot like a daydream. Nobody I’ve spoken to about the fact that I’m writing more and loving it has judged me, or told me I am being silly or unrealistic for working towards a deep-seated dream I’ve had as long as I could read.

Dreams are silly things, but they’re great.

My daydream dreams are mostly about when we are able to go on an adventure, and getting to walk the streets of Paris or Florence or Cape Town or Kenton, breathe the air and eat the appropriate food.

My dreams, on the other hand, have me pinning ideas for dialogue prompts, or watching authortube vlogs of authors doing 24-hour writeathons, or looking up the NaNoWriMo rules and regs. (Any NaNoWriMo participants? How have you found it?).

While my dreams are far away from being realised, I can practice towards them. Enjoying the time until I can make my daydreams a reality. Until I can walk the streets of Paris, I will smash the keys and add to my word count.

I need to keep writing in one direction for a bit, and I’ve been struggling with getting up the energy for it, but today I’ve started early enough and I’m not on supper duty, so Scrivener here I come.

Day 35.

Writing song: