When I was a child I had a wild imagination, and I mean wild.
As in, I would rather play in my backyard, by myself, than play with the neighborhoods most of the time.
I had imaginary friends who would accompany me on my adventures in my house or in my neighborhood. Sometimes we’d travel to other planets (which were just different rooms in my house) or sometimes they would help me with my homework.
My favorite thing to do was going into my backyard when no one was home and combine various mediums of movies, television, novels and books, and then making up my own stories. On one day I would be Luke Skywalker fighting Darth Vader in an anime universe and on the next day I would create my own cartoon show playing with all sorts of Nicktoon characters. Other days I would re-enact my dreams: I would go on an adventure with my heroes or fight off the monsters that gave me nightmares.
So yeah, that kind of wild.
My parents thought it was fantastic. My mother absolutely loved it, and she encouraged me to keep playing with my imagination and to expand it by reading as much as I could. She even bought me a poster with a picture of Albert Einstein that read, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
When I look back on the wild imagination I had a wave of gratitude washes over me. As I am so grateful that I was brought up in an environment that made me feel safe to explore my imagination, and now I see that my imagination is still wild, I just express it differently.
I believe my wild imagination is helping me in my current job, and in my journey as a writer. As an employee I use my imagination to solve problems and to explore different avenues, and as I writer, I am creating my own worlds.
Ultimately, I would love to create stories that would inspire a new generation of people, both young and old, to use their imagination.
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Photo Credits: Max Felner
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