If you give me an inch, my mind takes a mile.
I'm a very visual person. When something is described to me, I can see it in my head. I like to think that I write what I "see". Now, because of that, when someone starts describing things I shouldn't be seeing, my mind begins to fabricate just that. Nine times outta ten, I come up with something significantly worse than reality.
This is why 'what if's and I don't get along. Because the moment I start thinking, "Well, what if this happened?", I'm gone. Shot. Caput. My brain is already coming up with a story and already thinking of the worst case scenario.
For example: I have to talk to a friend soon about some issues we've been having. I'm not looking forward to it, but I really should. I don't want our friendship to be strained and, if at all possible, I want to get back to our ridiculous conversations and understood stupidity. However, my mind has already conjured up what the worst case might be. That alone makes me even less thrilled about the prospect that lies ahead of me. Somewhere in my mind, the entire time we talk, I'm gonna be replaying this imaginary situation in my mind and fretting over the "right" things to say.
Keep in mind, I'm probably not going to be having this conversation for a week. Just imagine what'll happen in the time in between. I could come up with all sorts of nasty end results that could plague me for days to come.
At the same time though, I almost never have nightmares. Crazy, right? Well, I might have them, but I sure never remember them. I can only remember two, and one of them shouldn't have qualified as a nightmare, yet it scared the bejeezus out of me.
Anyway, all of this to say: story-tellers and world builders tend to have this problem. Or so I've found. In the many conversations I've had with writers, we all seem to do this sort of thing. Making up stories about our lives as though that'll somehow be what happens. I've found - personally - that the moment I start pretending something in my life is gonna work out a certain way, it doesn't. God has a funny way of making things far more epic than I could ever come up with.
I do this though. Even though I know it doesn't help me, I still get caught up in this pretend reality. As though what I could imagine is better than what's actually happening. Sometimes, I think, I miss what's going on in my life because I'm too busy making something up that I think is better. Normally, I just wind up missing something and finding that reality was plenty of an adventure on its own.
I think that just stems from my desire for things to be more epic than they actually are. *Shrugs* That might just be me though.
Currently Editing: Genesis
Currently Listening to: "Homecoming" by Thomas Bergersen
No comments:
Post a Comment