The New Year is underway and the remaining 351 days (it’s a leap year) lay outstretched ahead of me like endless sand flats, with no signposts, no trees and no elevation, nothing to indicate events, significant dates, or even intentions. I’m not without ideas, of course, my head is abuzz with possibilities. During the holidays I spent several hours scouring the pages of both Australian and Irish real estate websites with notions of restoring old buildings, with sprawling gardens, and a converted barn or outbuilding as my art studio for my as yet undetermined medium of choice. No need to choose mind you, I’m a multidisciplinary artist, a multidisciplinary converted barn studio. There would also be rescue donkeys because the rural idylls are nothing without stone walls and donkeys. Grand designs indeed.
These yearnings are a type of escape I suppose, perhaps a way to avoid the strange expectations that the new year brings. Declarations of plans, resolutions, and ‘words of the year’ abound on social media and I’m busy living in a dream world. While my head may well be stuck in the sand and I am delaying the important work of, well, my actual work, I do think it's important to daydream, to yearn and get lost in wild imagination.
That pang of wanting something else, being hungry for change is not a bad thing necessarily, no matter how fantastical it may be. A little house in the country is not that far-fetched in reality and perhaps someday it may become real. In the meantime, it occurred to me that these mental meanderings are surely a good sign of being in a state of rest, “oh” I thought, at the weekend, “I’m relaxed”.
Enter metacognition, thinking about thinking. This realisation, that I was relaxed enough to daydream got me thinking about the science of daydreaming and whether there were benefits to it. A quick Google, says absolutely yes, with lots of proven benefits. Of course, my biased research plucked the supportive evidence out of the half-dozen or so articles and journal papers I read. There is even a term for the better type of daydreaming, coined by psychologist and daydream researcher Jerome L. Singer. Positive Constructive Daydreaming according to his research is associated with openness, curiosity, sensitivity, and an exploration of ideas, feelings, and sensations.
Daydreaming has long been considered a sign of inattention, however, and some of the earlier daydream research supports this. Countless students have been admonished by teachers for being ‘away with the fairies’ and not paying attention. On reflection, daydreaming may have been a legitimate coping mechanism considering some of the awful maths classes of my youth. Schooling aside, daydreaming is still largely seen as a shortcoming, a failure of attention but also a lack of productivity. This outdated perception is beginning to change, however. More recent research detailed in this article by Jill Suttie suggests that in fact, daydreaming is hugely beneficial for creative thinking and problem-solving. Progressive industries, workplaces, and even some schools acknowledge that downtime to allow daydreaming or creativity is important. Neuroscience is rapidly advancing, with brain imagining clarifying and improving on the existing research. We can now see what parts of the brain are involved in the daydream state and how that correlates to other parts of our cognition. Fascinating stuff.
As a confessed daydreamer, I can attest that I feel much more creative when I have time for daydreaming and contemplation. I need to generate ideas. I need the non-linear thinking, the mental meanderings into paths unknown to find new ways of doing things or to find solutions. I need time away from screens, and other people's orbits to sit and think for a while, to let ideas percolate. That barn studio needs my dedicated daydreaming to fill it with creations.
I realised while out rock-hopping over my favourite rock platform by the sea yesterday that connecting with nature through slow and aimless wandering is a sort of daydreaming in motion. Non-attachment to outcomes, noticing colours, sounds and moments of beauty, little moments of inspiration and contemplation. I cherish the time and space to unravel, unclench, and drift off into imagined futures, to allow thoughts to emerge. And yes, dipping in and out of psychology and neuroscience is affirming, and to pathologise ways of thinking is tempting. I sense though, no I know, that we have always needed to wander, to wander in our thoughts and dreams, and to wander in nature, to explore. Best-laid plans and New Year's resolutions are all very well, but perhaps the most interesting parts of our futures, the next 351 days are in the unseen and as yet undiscovered possibilities.
Natures notes is proudly written on and inspired by Dharawal Country. I recognise the Dharawal & Wodi Wodi custodians and ancestors who have an enduring connection to land, water and skies.
Always Was and Always Will be Aboriginal Land.