Dateline 14 March 2020

Lately I’ve been making a concerted effort to reduce the number of magazines on hand. This is part of our effort at decluttering our house. We don’t have any paid magazine subscriptions—not that I wouldn’t like to have one or two—but a lot of freebies come in the mail. I hate to just trash them, for they often have good articles and information on them.

I sometimes pull something from the top of the stack and sometimes dig into it for something older. This week, having taken a few off the top and disposed of them, I reached blindly into the basket and pulled out from midway down an issue of the University of Rhode Island alumni magazine. From Fall 2018, this was the first issue of the magazine under its new name, University of Rhode Island Magazine. I always enjoy reading this and, in fact, read it more than skim it.

This issue had an interesting article titled “What a Day for a Daydream” by Ann Hood. Ann is a writer of a fair number of books. Four years behind me and previously unknown to me, she has obviously excelled at the writing game. I spent some time looking at her website, published works, and blog.

Her article set me to thinking about my own relationship with daydreaming. I do it a fair amount, though I think of it as brainstorming. I do it most at night after going to bed. For a long time I thought I daydreamed extensively. It was years before I realized that my daydreams transitioned into dreams and I was asleep. How much was daydreaming and how much sleeping dreaming? I don’t really know.

Ann said

“Daydreaming…does not get problems solved or children raised or legal cases settled or books written.”

True. But if daydreaming and brainstorming are closely akin, then maybe good things start from daydreaming. I think that’s how many of my writing ideas come, from daydreaming. Later today, if time stays available as I think it will be, I intend to write out the composition of a future Bible study (not the one from my last post). It’s an idea that came to me…how? I think it came from a daydream, or a brainstorm, thinking about a Bible story then thinking about how I would teach it, how many lessons it would make, if it would make a good lesson series, etc.

I don’t think I daydream as much as I did 20 years ago. Although, maybe it’s so much a part of my being I just don’t think about it. I’m going to think about it for a while, understand when I’m daydreaming. Maybe I’ll be pleased with the results.

Thanks you, Ann Hood, for your article. Sorry it took me so long to get to it.