Daydreaming is my addiction.  “Well, if one’s going to daydream, one might as well make it a good one, don’t you suppose?” says Danielle Paige.

My biggest vice is the real estate section in Brisbane News or weekend supplements.  I drool over million-dollar homes, daydreaming how I would rearrange the décor, or daydream about refurbishing an old mansion.  Of course, I enjoy daydreaming about being effortlessly rich, benevolent, eccentric and having a chauffeur to drive me everywhere.  Until Lily Amis reminds me “Daydreaming is a way of escaping from reality. But you can’t avoid the reality forever! Sooner or later you have to wake up and face it!”

Still, my mind wanders no matter what, usually while doing domestic tasks.  My focus regularly trails away into the realms of daydream when I am reading, writing or watching a movie.  As Neil Gaiman says “You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.”

A cautionary note comes from Jasper Fforde who says “My mind wanders terribly.  I’m not wholly annoyed by my daydreaming as it has been of immense use to me as regards imaginative thought, but it doesn’t help when it comes to concentration.  And writing needs concentration – lots of it.”

♥ Gretchen Bernet-Ward

 

P.S. Charles-Édouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier) a 20th century architect said “Une maison est une machine-à-habiter” or “A house is a machine for living in”.