Que Sera, Sera

When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother, what will I be
Will I be pretty, will I be rich
Here’s what she said to me.

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future’s not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

When I was just a little girl, I was always leading the neighborhood kids on some quest to fight a dragon or hunt for pirate treasure or journey through space and time. When I wasn’t playing like the living room floor was made of lava or the neighbor’s swings were Kitt from Knight Rider, I had my nose in a book. I read at least a book or two a week and I never went anywhere without a book. I walked with a book in front of my face, I rode on the bus with a book in front of my face, and I watched t.v. out of the corner of one eye while reading between the interesting parts. And I took all of the characters I liked best from all the books I read and television I saw and I mixed them all up in my active, creative imagination and I made my own stories. When I was just a little girl.

When I was in junior high, I got side tracked a little by the idea of general lust. My best friend and I would make up stories about rock stars that we liked and how we were going to grow up and meet them and marry them. Still, it was my active, creative mind going full stream ahead and if she hadn’t stabbed me in the back and twisted the knife a few times, that sort of sorted thing might have gone on into high school or at least until she transfered to the school for smartypants and got too special to associate with the rest of us.

But I digress.

In high school, I found my written voice. I refocused my storytelling onto paper and I turned out to be pretty good at it. I wrote my one and only piece of Star Trek fan fiction, which will remain buried in my file cabinet even though it is pretty damned good if I do say so myself. I wrote a number of short stories, including the first draft of what would turn out to be the second half of my best ever short story, which sadly has never been published though I should — though the rejection thing bothers me. Plus, I wrote my only complete novel which was horrible, but the last chapter won some honorary award in some city-wide youth art recognition scholarship thing — I actually found the certificate last weekend in my file cabinet. I wrote a lot of angsty poetry too. A lot of it seems to still fit me today. This was my hey-day of writing, I guess.

While my mother proudly patted me on the head and talked about how wonderfully talented I was, I was pretty much told that under no uncertain terms would I be going to college to study writing, not journalism and especially not creative writing. My choices were somewhere in the sciences and engineering. So I went off to college to study mechanical engineering and eventually downgraded that to computer science. Don’t get me wrong, I love programming. There’s an art form in convincing a computer to do things it’s not supposed to do. Over the years I’ve faced a lot of challenges with computers that have called for a lot of creativity and I’ve done a lot of things that even the Vendors said couldn’t be done with their products (including Microsoft). But you have to admit that there’s only so much variation and creativity in computers and quite frankly everyone’s doing it these days.

So, in college, one of my minors was English (the other was math — yes, I was crazy). I took creative writing and I rewrote that short story I wrote the end of in high school. However, the time to write kept dwindling with the classwork getting harder and the little time I had for socializing too. I wrote less on paper though I still had lots of stories and ideas in my head.

After college, I found a new outlet for my active, creative mind when I found a role-playing group. Soon not only did I have a new place to direct my character ideas but I became a Game Master and became a storyteller too. Then I expanded myself further and got into online role-playing through play-by-e-mail (PBeM) games. I was writing again in a way, writing stories with other people, creating, developing.

Then about five or six years ago or so we stopped getting together quite as much to role-play as a group. People started getting busy with their grown-up lives. They started having wives and husbands who actually wanted them around on the weekends. They had jobs and social lives that interfered with such silliness as creativity and storytelling.

And then I moved to Maine and I ridiculously tried to keep attending those games in New Orleans via speaker phone. I was desperate to keep the glimmer of creativity in my life.

The fact was that even the PBeM games for me were slipping away. Some of them were just winding down due to lack of interest and some came to an abrupt end for me due to personality conflict.

Suddenly I was without my role-playing creative crutch. That was about a year and a half ago.

I realized yesterday afternoon while driving home from work that I don’t daydream anymore.

I think I stopped daydreaming long before I stopped role-playing. I was going through the motions of it all. It’s a very sad, hopeless discovery because it’s a sign of hopelessness. A few years ago I accepted me and my status quo. I accepted that this is my life and it isn’t going to change much. I’m pretty much going to be getting up and going to a job I feel lukewarm about five days a week for the rest of my life and I’m going to spend two days a week alone with my pets every year for the rest of my life. I feel sad about it but I accept it. I just realized that this is who I am. I just plain got tired of the pain of hoping for something different. I’m 36 years old and I can see the pattern now. I see what it’s been like with men, with friends, with my parents. I just don’t expect things to change much. I would be very surprised if it did at this point. And I don’t think it’s wrong to realize who you are and embrace it.

However, it occurred to me yesterday that perhaps in doing so, I gave up my daydreaming. By accepting this is how it’s going to be always, I don’t ever daydream about the future, about how things might be if I meet some cute guy or buy some cute dress or lose 30 lbs. But I also can’t seem to imagine other worlds and unusual characters anymore. I’m far too practical to spend my brain power on that. I spend my time in traffic listening instead to what Congress has or hasn’t done on the radio or singing along to 70’s music when I used to be creating mysterious, suspenseful dialog in my head.

The thing is that I want my daydreaming back. I want to be lost in other worlds with other people in other lives and other adventures everyday. I just don’t know how to get that part of my brain restarted. It’s so ironic that for years I tried to turn that part of my brain off, wondering what “normal” people thought about, but now that it’s quiet, I’m still wondering what “normal” people think about in the quiet moments only I want the stories and ideas back and I want the confidence I had in high school to put them on paper.

Update: This post has been blessed to be a winner of The White Raven Award.