Do you like using your imagination?

[foliodoe]

As I get older and take time to figure out how my mind works, I'm learning that I just love using my mind to conjure up vivid sensory experiences in my imagination.

If I concentrate enough, I feel like I can visualize objects or people in HD. What goes on in my imagination is just as compelling and realistic as what's actually going on around me.

My favorite movies, music, books, etc. capture my imagination and give me a lot to think about. While living in isolation during the pandemic, I spent a lot of time lying in my bed and just entering an imaginary realm where I could spend time with my favorite people. It felt like they were really there.

Is this something you can relate to? If so, how do you manage your tendency/desire to get lost in your imagination? What's your favorite thing to think about? How vivid is your imagination in general?

 

[330]

I like to compose music in my imagination, organize things plan things, and play with numbers and Patterns . I like to do this sitting still and doing nothing outside of my mind .

 

[Knower of nothing]

The best I can manage is a trance-like state during pacing where I'll go through concepts in my head. Mostly done to get concrete ideas for visual art such as comics or videogame levels. It is rather satisfying though.

 

[foliodoe]

I have been accused before of having a wildly overactive imagination. I have always made people laugh with silly things I make up, I like a good joke and a funny story. And I'm good at visualizing things, I'm a visual thinker. I was building things for a living for a while and I like to visualize how things look from all angles, how it's designed and put together.

I can definitely get carried away with my imagination! There are some friendships I've had over the years that felt stronger and more meaningful than they really were just because I was thinking about and imagining interactions with that person so much.

 

[foliodoe]

I like to compose music in my imagination, organize things plan things, and play with numbers and Patterns . I like to do this sitting still and doing nothing outside of my mind .

How does this make you feel? Do you ever catch yourself wishing the real world could be as interesting as the one in your mind?

 

[330]

How does this make you feel? Do you ever catch yourself wishing the real world could be as interesting as the one in your mind?

Yes I do , for sure . It seems I can be completely relaxed and free in my mind. I can understand everything and no anxiety. I do find lots of things outside of my mind interesting. Especially things and objects , people sometimes. Older people very much so .

 

[Shamar]

As I get older and take time to figure out how my mind works, I'm learning that I just love using my mind to conjure up vivid sensory experiences in my imagination.

If I concentrate enough, I feel like I can visualize objects or people in HD. What goes on in my imagination is just as compelling and realistic as what's actually going on around me.

My favorite movies, music, books, etc. capture my imagination and give me a lot to think about. While living in isolation during the pandemic, I spent a lot of time lying in my bed and just entering an imaginary realm where I could spend time with my favorite people. It felt like they were really there.

Is this something you can relate to? If so, how do you manage your tendency/desire to get lost in your imagination? What's your favorite thing to think about? How vivid is your imagination in general?

My imagination is critical to my existence. It was only in my imagination that I could escape reality and have a happy life. For a little while. Otherwise I would have jumped off a bridge or taken poison before I was 10. Luckily, I knew that it WAS my imagination, and could leave at any time. The temptation to remain in that imaginary world was powerful. Like you, my imagination and conceptualization allowed me to watch current flows in the Earth and solve annoying interpretation problems. When I needed to build something, I could build it in my mind and work out all the details before I touched any physical parts. Now, my entire social life and sex life is entirely in my imagination. Mainly because it can't happen in real life.

 

[Thinx]

As a child I imagined different identities for myself, and stories about the persons. Partly this was around my confusion about gender, where I didn't fit into either of the 2 gender categories, and yet felt pressure to be female with all the accumulated cultural norms that go with that. No thanks. So I usually had a story going in my head where I was male. But nowadays I can say, nonbinary, which fits best.

And I have always done bits of creative writing, and continue to do so. I imagine best when pacing. Hard to focus. Pacing helps.

 

[Raggamuffin]

As I spend a lot of my free time sat in a room infront of my PC, whislt swaying side to side on the floor - I explore and get lost in my imagination for 5+ hours a day. It's quite wonderful to be honest. It's my number one form of entertainment, and after a smoke I just delve even deeper.

As the OP said - it's vivid, and evolves. Sometimes I replay events, sometimes entirely fictitious ones and I evolve the narrative and progress etc.

Time on my own comprises some of my best and worst moments.

Ed

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I enjoy taking my observations of the landscape and using my imagination to think of ancient worlds.

 

[Darkkin]

I make worlds and creatures that never are. Rabbits of glass, a fox made of worn out socks who keeps the secrets of the stars, a Whipping Goat, the Lessthan, elusive Morph of Where, Roaring Hedgehogs, Hyenas ruffed in brass, the Deeper Knight of Th'dore, the Trioctopi of Deeping Sound, Echo and his loyal clockwork hound, Lore, the Lollop, and the Last Great Ripple Gannet, the Selkie Toxic White, and the sisters from the House at the End of the World, Pi and Phi.

There are few who can keep pace me when it comes to the realms of fancy....

 

[foliodoe]

I make worlds and creatures that never are. Rabbits of glass, a fox made of worn out socks who keeps the secrets of the stars, a Whipping Goat, the Lessthan, elusive Morph of Where, Roaring Hedgehogs, Hyenas ruffed in brass, the Deeper Knight of Th'dore, the Trioctopi of Deeping Sound, Echo and his loyal clockwork hound, Lore, the Lollop, and the Last Great Ripple Gannet, the Selkie Toxic White, and the sisters from the House at the End of the World, Pi and Phi.

There are few who can keep pace me when it comes to the realms of fancy....

I love all of these ideas! I feel like we could trade these whimsical ideas back and forth all day!

I also go out of my way to try to imagine things that are impossible. An image I have never been able to get out of my mind is an ear of corn made out of blue plastic. This plastic corn is gigantic. It's resting on a field of golden wheat next to a red farmhouse.

Lately I have been giving myself permission to use my imagination more freely for creative work and it's been highly liberating!

 

[foliodoe]

I enjoy taking my observations of the landscape and using my imagination to think of ancient worlds.

This is one of the reasons I love traveling so much. Being exposed to different landscapes and architecture really fires up my imagination.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

This is one of the reasons I love traveling so much. Being exposed to different landscapes and architecture really fires up my imagination.

BINGO!! In America's Escalante Wilderness I saw massive/shifting, dune fields, with some water holes that accumulated fine clays that Dinosaurs left their footprints in. All in the rock. Or, in Morocco, seeing ancient, 350,000,000 year old mud volcanos around the partial rim of an even more ancient caldera. Cephalopods and Trilobites loved it.

Geology is the landscape, explained.

And culture/history may be understood by observation. This April I did not understand why the Palace, Government buildings and a couple of important temples in Bangkok were surrounded by a series of canals until I visited Ayutthaya, the Ancient Capital, and saw how canals and the Chao Phraya there acted as defenses. I enjoy meeting the people who took me around and were able to communicate in ways that let me make connections.

 

[Wolfnox]

Yes. I find great comfort in it.

 

[Slime_Punk]

I have almost no visual imagination whatsoever and I can't follow fiction or pretty much any kind of story because of it. Even when I try to hold something in my mind, it's kind of like a blurry representation of it at best.

Honestly I thought this was an ASD-related issue but it seems like mostly everyone here is the opposite of me

 

[330]

I have almost no visual imagination whatsoever and I can't follow fiction or pretty much any kind of story because of it. Even when I try to hold something in my mind, it's kind of like a blurry representation of it at best.

Honestly I thought this was an ASD-related issue but it seems like mostly everyone here is the opposite of me

I have lots of trouble with fiction as well , very hard for me to read fiction and picture anything from it so I usually don’t .Usually stick to non-fiction reading ,If I do read graphic novel or comics that is fine but find myself not reading but studying art on the pictures .
Only thing I can do in my imagination is Music, numbers , patterns and sometimes mechanical things .

My visual imagination is very limited and selective.

 

[SusanLR]

When I was young, I had a great imagination.
Painting, writing songs and poems, drawing cartoon strips.
Now that I am older, it seems to have slipped away.
Too many real- life things to think about and problems to solve.

Now I still enjoy documentaries, science and medical journals.
About the only fictional stories I enjoy are a few movies.
Again, when younger, reading fiction daily was a routine I enjoyed.

But when I go to sleep it is a whole other realm.
Vivid, colorful, realistic dreams present themselves for my imaginary pleasure.

 

[Progster]

As a child, my imagination was all about how I could invent something, construct something out of things I found round the house, and experiments.

 

[Shevek]

I have almost no visual imagination whatsoever and I can't follow fiction or pretty much any kind of story because of it. Even when I try to hold something in my mind, it's kind of like a blurry representation of it at best.

Honestly I thought this was an ASD-related issue but it seems like mostly everyone here is the opposite of me

I generally skim over place descriptions in stories, although I can remember places I've seen. However, I've trained myself to imagine machines and structures, and see where they are highly stressed. When I was young, mother would get a bit of peace by putting spaghetti in a pot of boiling water too small for it. The lower ends had to soften and bend to let the top cook, and I'd try to get them all wet as soon as possible without breakage. Now, I just imagine something being made of half-cooked pasta instead of structural materials, and it is easy to see where it would bend or break.
Oddly, I also write descriptions of gadgets that nobody seems to understand, although if they would just follow along making a sketch from the instructions, they would.
Tesla said that he could construct a machine in his head, run it, and then check for wear.
I have also encountered people vividly imagining things that are not there, such as stability produced by a shape that does not actually work, and ignoring things that are significant, such as a small feature that ruins a streamlined shape, especially if it is clear.