Welcome to Hyperphantasia

Welcome to hyperphantasia. Or perhaps hyper imagination? It doesn’t really matter what label you call it, but I often thought that other people could imagine a scene play out right in front of your eyes on command. Sitting in the office chair staring at the work screen, then suddenly a tiny human-like figure morphs into existence on your desk and is now karate chopping the mechanical pencil in front of you, but you casually continue on with your work, sound familiar? It happens to me all the time. Can you almost smell the coffee from the made-up tavern where a six-foot elven merchant behind the counter is brewing, talking to other patrons while you write the next scene of the book no one is going to read until you stop self-doubting the work you do? Hmm? I can. Or how about playing out scenarios in your head where the imagery is so real that you accidentally trigger fight or flight responses, do you do that? This may sound cliche, but I really wish I had given in to the imagery and pursued my first love of the arts. But here is something that is interesting. Can you turn it off? Can you shake the imagery out of your head? I can. It is weird how it occurs, too. Let us take the original scenario of you sitting on your office chair, then the miniature manlike figure starts karate chopping the mechanical pencils in front of you. Then let us say that a pink cat calmly struts its way towards the little martial artists and then spontaneously morphs into a nine-tailed kitsune; all the while, a small army of undead creeps behind our two new heroes. Before the action kicks off, you notice that you misspelled a word you were actively typing while fully engaged with your work. No missed sentences, no confusion on what was going on with your job, nor any missed strides with the potential epic fight scene happening in real time in front of you, in full color, with dialogue! You tell yourself, okay, time to turn this off, then poof. The imagery is gone, and you seamlessly continue on with your day. Interesting, is it not? What is frustrating is that a lot of the time, I can’t focus a narrative out of it. It has happened plenty of times, but the majority of instances, it is full-on randomness, until I give it complete control. If I focus my energy on what imagery is playing out in front of me, I can carve out a story. The problem? As a storyteller, I can imagine the most intense of scenes and the more serene of scenes, but my skills as a writer are still coming around. This is where frustration kicks in. You see, I never nourished this imagery, and I never thought about what I could do with this “theater of the mind” in the form of expression or even attempt a career out of it. I was too traditional in the first half of my existence. And I confidently say, “first half” because I am a firm believer that life doesn’t really have a definition of when something starts or ends. I mean, of course, there are basic things like adolescence and developmental stages, but I’m talking about this thing we made up called “careers.” It sucks that I am now trying to tap into my imagination and explore the creative side of existence because this is fun, but the fact of the matter is that it doesn’t matter when you start embracing your thing; as long as you embrace it. But for me, trying to funnel these fantastical characters and all of their quirks onto paper so that others may enjoy, I’m still working on that. But in the meantime, I’ll keep karate chopping mechanical pencils and convert that into stories.