If you look up daydreaming on the internet, there are two opposing ideas: one is that daydreaming leads to all creativity.  Another is that daydreaming interferes with life, is an addiction, and is something that is incredibly difficult to overcome.

My opinion falls somewhere between the two.  

For me, daydreaming is a very comfortable habit.  It's something that I've done since I was young to entertain myself, especially when I was bored.  No movie around?  No problem!  Daydreaming to the rescue.  Daydreaming was a place where I could retreat from the world and my problems (those of you who read my previous journal about sugar addiction know some of those problems).  A lot of my writing (yes, I have written fictional stuff quite a lot, though I don't post it here), was little more than legitimized daydreaming (though I must say, I write a pretty good scene).

So what's the problem?  Doesn't all this daydreaming lead to increased creativity?  Um . . . no.  Because for me, daydreaming is akin to a feedback loop in my mind: replaying the same scene over and over again, with minor variations.  The stories that I make up by means of daydreaming tend to get away from me, to change on a fairly rapid basis, one thing leading to another to another, kind of like a meandering conversation.  Any story that I have actually finished was not finished because of daydreaming: it got finished because I consciously planned the thing out and then wrote it.  Ditto with artwork.  Ditto with any worlds I create (I like to create worlds).  Anything that really gets done NEVER GETS DONE BECAUSE OF DAYDREAMING.

Daydreaming for me isn't creativity.  Daydreaming just uses creativity.

About a week or so ago, I decided that I was going to stop daydreaming.  Permanently.  Okay, at least for thirty days, but the idea was that after thirty days, I could make not-daydreaming a habit.

And surprising things have happened.

Because I'm not wound up in the inside of my head, I notice other people more, and interact with them better.  I've been able to have more focus at work, and not daydreaming has led to me having more energy when I get home, so I can do things like get into Photoshop and actually do some artwork.  Things like video games actually have less appeal for me.  (To some of you this might sound like something horrible, but trust me, video games for me aren't really a pleasure, they're more like something I plug into to spin my wheels and waste time).

So is stopping daydreaming easy?  

No.

Most of the time I can come up with other things to think about, but sometimes, especially when I'm tired, it's difficult to say no to that old, dark, comfortable place.  Once I actually did sit down with a pen and notebook ("Surely I can turn this daydream story into a legitimate story. " --Nope) and came away disappointed and resolving that I wouldn't do that anymore (it may take a year or more for me to get back to writing fiction. )  

But when I'm not daydreaming, I feel more alive.

I like feeling more alive.

So I'ma keep on replacing daydreams with other thoughts until it becomes a part of me.

Because feeling more alive is amazing.