I Have No Imagination!
Mind thirst
I don’t think that I had a normal childhood, at least not from what I see around me, which isn’t much. But as a child, I didn’t know any different. I just thought that everyone lived with parents, two sisters and a brother. And rarely anyone else.
Isolated as I was, you’d think that I’d have had an imagination. I should have had at least an imaginary friend to make up for my lack of friends. Or a stuffed animal to comfort me when I cried. But I didn’t have any of these things, I didn’t know that I was missing anything, but now I see that I missed it all.
Being a child without imagination is like being in the desert without water and I was slowly dying of thirst.
Is imagination really that important to a child? Look at these skills from the Good Therapy PsychPedia website that children develop when they use their imagination.
Cognitive skills
Imagination is an important part of human cognition, and the ability to imagine things that have not actually occurred may even be unique to humans
Empathy
Young children often become very imaginative as part of their development, and this imaginative capacity can help them develop empathy, the ability to take on another’s perspective and the ability to anticipate consequences to their actions.
Resolving conflicts and coping strategies
Some therapists use play therapy with young children, taking advantage of their active imaginations to help them resolve conflicts and develop coping strategies
Mental health
Imagination plays a number of important roles in mental health. The ability to contemplate things that are not actually happening can contribute to mental health problems such as anxiety and delusions. But imagination can also play a powerful role in healing. Some therapists encourage their clients to envision happy endings, positive outcomes, and peaceful locations to improve emotional and mental well-being.
So as a child and now as an adult, I have mind thirst. I don’t know if that’s even a real thing but I can feel the thirst in my mind for knowledge, wisdom, learning, and imagination. I read fiction, fantasy, sci-fi just to try to satisfy this thirst and it helps. But my mind is still parched, so I have started writing on a regular basis. At first, I wrote about myself mostly because it was therapy for my whole being, not just my mind. But then I saw that there was a challenge to start a newsletter on Substack and I decided to enter the challenge and see where it took me.
My Newsletter — Imagine That
I wanted to start a newsletter that other people might possibly find interesting. So I thought about different subjects that I could write about such as my life story or a journal or something more brainy like physics or trigonometry (not likely). But I decided that the one thing that I don't have much of is what I wanted to write about. Imagination.
I’ve called my newsletter Imagine That because having little or no imagination, I want some!
My newsletter will be filled with imaginative stories eventually. For now, I’ve started a sci-fi story about small particles called Quarks.
quark, any member of a group of elementary subatomic particles that interact by means of the strong force and are believed to be among the fundamental constituents of matter. https://www.britannica.com/science/quark
I’m no scientist, by any means, but I’m taking this concept of small particles and creating a world called Quarkopolis whose inhabitants are Quarkles and who reside in the Zeroth Dimension. Curious? Here are the links to the intro and first three chapters of the Realm of Quarkopolis.
Writing Challenge Contestants
I joined along with 17 other contestants and our challenge was first of all to create a newsletter. I will spare you the details of most of the other requirements (you can thank me later). But there is one thing that we all need to continue to the next phase of the contest.
100 LIKES on these articles by Feb 15
These are the contestants and their articles that need 100 likes — I’d like for at least some of us to move on to the next phase of the challenge! Maybe one or more of these titles will interest you.
2. Yan Huang, 3 Minutes Is All You Need and The Importance Of Writing To Bust Through Struggles Of Life
3. Kathy K, Imagine That
4. Drashti Shroff, A Golden Ticket Towards Destiny
5. Sharing Randomly, Tired of Not Knowing What to Write?
6. Ida Johannesen, Welcome To “Word for Woman” — Letters on Sexuality, Shadow Work and Conscious Relating
7. Ellie Jacobson, Come On In & Write Awhile
8. Libby Walkup, Finally an Introduction, Self-Discovery, and Becoming the Writer I Always Dreamed I Could Be
9. T Mann, “Read All About It!” Writer Throws Hat in the Ring With the Big Guns!
10. Ashley, How Reading A Book Inspired Me To Start My Newsletter
11. Marilyn Flower, From Melancholy Malarkey to Sacred Foolishness
12. Karen Schwartz, Sugar and Spice, it’s free — there’s no price.
13. Zaha Hyatt, Mind+Craft: Grow Your Mind and Improve Your Writing Craft
14. Tamil, Your soul can lead you to happiness
15. Rhea Anglesey, How To Hack Your Writer Life
16. Kathryn Eriksen, Undo Your Learning and Live from Knowing Instead
17. Robert Shaneyfelt, The Passion I follow
18. Rosa de Saron C., This Newsletter is Going On An Adventure and You’re Invited
Thank you for reading this article about imagination and newsletters and mind thirst. If you’d like to support me in another way, I’d gladly accept a coffee!