When I was a kid, I was often lost in thought. I’ll admit, there were more than a few times where, say, I had absolutely no idea that homework or some other special project was assigned, because I was just plain somewhere else when the teacher told everyone about it.
I was on other worlds. I was holding off a horde of orcs at one end of the bridge while my companions escaped across it. I was leaping into an escape pod before the starship exploded. I was discovering ruins deep in the heart of a rain forest.
This was one of those things that led teachers to shake their heads at me.
Except my English teachers, because I was reading plenty, and writing these crazy things. Doing terrible sketches. Scribbling and scrawling.
There are reams of notebooks and loose paper, still hidden way somewhere, of these daydreams made tangible. Over time they coalesced into proper descriptions of places, outlines of stories, defined characters.
Over time, I’ve been able to take those daydreams and get paid to share them with you. I am literally a profession daydreamer, albeit an organized one with charts and notes and pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back. Still: PROFESSIONAL DAYDREAMER. How awesome is that?
Hopefully awesome enough that Mr. Stokes can forgive me totally whiffing that “Covered Bridges of the Northeast” project. Sorry, Mr. Stokes.