I’m sitting in my living room, gazing out at the trees in our yard and the tiny forest across the street. It’s still. Cars drive by, something moving now. A weary jogger chugs and puffs along the sidewalk. Breathe, I think. A cicada buzzes to the window and clings to the screen. A squirrel narrowly dodges a truck. I can do this for a long time; just look.
When I was a kid, I could stare at an ant hill endlessly, wondering what was going on in their little brains. I spent hours at the library browsing the titles in the stacks, not searching for anything specific, just looking for anything that might catch my eye.
Yeah, I was that kid.
I did a lot of daydreaming. In my room, in the back seat of the car, during dinner. A large portion of my daydreaming was done in the classroom, which resulted in report cards being filled with concerned mentions of my mind being elsewhere.
As I got older and started working and making goals for myself, I slowly got out of the habit of daydreaming. Only in rare moments, like when I was stuck on a plane for several hours would I allow my mind to calm down and just… be. Otherwise, I was always thinking of the next step, the next goal, what was going on at work, how will we get the kids to the thing without a car, etc..
Over the past year, I’ve started consciously allowing myself to daydream more. One way I do that is by purposefully putting my phone across the room, or simply leaving it in my pocket when I’m standing in a long line — leaving room for the possibility that I might become bored.
It’s amazing how much goes on around you when you’re not scrolling Instagram.
I daydream a lot - that's how I get my ideas. If I'm sitting in a café, I'm not on my phone because I want to hear my mind. I think that those periods of small solitude that we are really losing are so important.
— Patti Smith
It’s not that I don’t have work, or goals, or just a million tiny little things (and some big things) going on all the time anymore. That’s still there. But I’m starting to take time to put the brakes on in my brain and just spend time looking around when I can. I find myself browsing the stacks at the library without feeling like I need to be somewhere else. I stare at the boxes on the grocery store shelf and a story starts to emerge. Instead of making yet another list, I doodle.
I like where this going so far, this mental slowing down. Maybe one day I’ll realize that I don’t even need coffee anymore.
Wait.
Nope.
Let’s not get too crazy.
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