Day Dreams

Throughout the past 20 odd years, I’ve been medicated with the use of anti-depressants.

Keeping myself distracted through a lot of that time I used alcohol which mixed me up. Drink & drugs, don’t work. They may well make you feel good and nice at that time, but in the long run, when you look at your own psychology and well-being, believe me, it’s a bad thing.

I consider myself very lucky in that I’ve never been sectioned or even hospitalised through mental health issues, but I’ve felt that at times I should have been and today I feel really good having quit the drinking habit and in so doing, letting the medications work the way they should. So good in fact that I’m starting to wean myself off of them.

The one thing that I hope for with respect to this is that I can actually start to daydream and fantasize about my life, my wants, my desires, and my needs. Without them, life can be a tad stale and monotonous, depressing, uneventful, and boring.

I’m a 54 year-year-old middle-aged man who has an ability to multi-task and has now condensed his todo-list down to a handful of subjects. Throughout the time that I’ve been incapacitated through mental health issues, I’ve been working away at improving skills that will HOPEFULLY get me into paid employment.

Only this morning I have been trying to work out what my strengths are and if you’re anything like me you struggle with that too. As soon as it comes to talking about myself I get brain fog. I noted that someone’s strengths should be something that that person had been doing for a long time and immediately thought of what I had been doing which has been being ‘spaced out’.

“How could I explain this in a resume?” I thought.

The great thing is that I don’t need to explain it anywhere but in my own head. Once I’d got my head around what has been happening I could carry on. And for me, carrying on, or starting again? at my age is a hard thing to grasp as it’s just too easy to think negatively about how I should have done it all by now.

I’m under no illusion that I could still fail at things, I mean, after all, I’m not 110% fully equipped with the skills that I have already. I’m still learning and I still have a lot to do.

My mind works fast (I take a medication that actually stops it racing), it turns over at a rate of knots and I still get lost, but I’ve learned to stop doing what I’m doing completely when that happens, walk away, have a break, watch a film, go for a walk, take a nap anything that reboots the brain.

Daring to put you’re daydreaming into action is the next thing that I’ll face and I already have just recently, only to be stopped by the COVID pandemic causing us to go into another lockdown here in the UK. So, now I will wait until we are released from solitude and then I’ll make my dash to the gym.

I honestly don’t think that I’ve ever had big daydreams. You know, the kind which I can only imagine makes you feel like your bursting at the seems?

I’ve had what I call Spiritual Awakenings at like 3 A.M. in the morning where I’ve been woken up by something to feel my head being massaged by 2 giant hands and I can feel a pulse of energy all around my body. But that was hardly daydreaming, even though it was during the next day.

Many a time have I been awoken at these early times with ideas rushing through my head, and at times it’s really difficult trying to note them down, having to shut my eyes again in order to picture/remember but still stay awake.

What I’m hoping for is that creativity will suddenly dawn on me and I’ll start to see how I can best use the skills that I’m learning right now. I think it’s slowly happening, right here and now and that is only because I’m doing this, writing this post, and making a mark.

I don’t even really have big dreams about that. About writing. I don’t want to write a book or even become a writer, I just like it here and I’ll carry on.

Living without daydreaming for me has meant that I haven’t had that foresight, that spark of an idea which suddenly makes you want to do something about it. I’ve lived my life wearing blinkers and I’ve only seen what’s been in front of me. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, a lot of people go through life the same way and have great lives. For me though with learning self-help and listening to a few good people about that, I want more.

And I’ll get more.

Daydreams or no daydreams I know what I want and I’m working towards something, the only thing is, is that I don’t know what exactly and this is where I kinda get a bit lost. If I don’t know where I’m going then how do I know that what I’m doing isn’t just a complete waste of time and effort?

Hope.

I live in hope that all will be well and everything will work its merry way out in the end and I’ll be sorted. Is that enough I ask myself, is just hoping enough? Well for me, it has to be. I find myself in a position now where I’ve half learned a few design applications and I’ve also learned that I can write. All that’s left to do now is find something to design and write about.

SO, for all of you who believe in daydreaming, in sitting there with your heads up in the clouds thinking about life as it could be, I’m here to tell you that you don’t need it. I’m sure they help and I sometimes think I’ve missed out by not having any but at the end of the day when you’ve done what you’ve done and accomplished little, what else is there?

But to just get on with it.