Daydreamers – are they impractical or visionary?

To my surprise there’s an overlap in meaning between a dream and a goal. Both can be about an ambition to achieve.

Working in education I’m familiar with goals – setting them, measuring them, reviewing them. I have goals in writing – improving my writing, finishing a competition entry, entering the competition, reflecting on constructive feedback, finishing the book, submitting to a publisher. But actually being published and read by a wide audience has always felt more like a dream – somehow more fugitive.

I’ve listened to successful writers at conferences talk about persistence and hard work. I can give myself a tick for those. But in the face of knockbacks I feel it’s the dream – the lure of the seemingly impossible – that keeps you going. The positive feedback from readers or editors who like your work helps a lot too!

A large-scale study showed participants spent an average of nearly half their waking time daydreaming, often while doing mundane tasks. Makes sense to me. There are some wonderful paintings about daydreaming – just search for paintings about daydreaming – you can get lost in them for hours. It seems daydreaming might be the default brain setting – if nothing else is happening daydream. It can also help creative thinking. I vote for that one.

If you like to get lost in stories of other people and their attempts to make sense of the world and find love come with me on my journey.