Building Planets

When this world gets you down, why not make up a new one in your head? I’ve had a story in me brain since the tenth grade. Only a hundred ish pages exist of said story but three books, two different spin offs, a show, and a soundtrack exist in my head. I have created a universe that I retreat into everytime I’m bored, sad, lonely, or inspired. Thus, it has built continuously within my brain folds despite me not having written any of it in several months.
    One of my friends/coworker/cheese bun buddy came up with her own yesterday. Naturally, during our shifts, we were fangirling over our own created universes. We shared ideas, histories, lands, and creatures. I had gotten so excited when she told me she suddenly was inspired to build a world in the wee hours of the night when sleep failed her. It’s all well and good to entertain oneself with their fantastical plots, but, to have someone else to feed off of makes it all the more wonderful.
    It’s gotten to the point in my invented second life where the characters are so real to me that I often think of items to add to my shopping list that would be absolutely useless to me. Shampoo for white or curly hair, dog food, allergy medicine that I already know doesn’t work on me, stuffed animals even though I already have plenty, nuts and seeds and dried fruit for a creature that I made up. I immerse myself into this place that only lives within my noggin to such a degree that I constantly have to make sure I don’t appear to be buffering to anyone glancing in my direction. 
    I often ponder the logic of the magical and inhuman. How do wings work on a person, where do they sit on the back? How do they move and how big are they? What does a werewolf do during a lunar eclipse? Do spells have to be verbal, controlled by a wand, or simply used like a Jedi uses the Force? Do dragons run out of fire? Where does it live in them? Just figuring out metabolisms and appetites alone is enough to occupy my thoughts for a good forty-five minutes. Let alone determining how high one can fly before the low oxygen affects them or blueprinting the mechanics of a hoverboard. These questions I ask myself though, solidify the image of my world, clarify it.
    This universe of mine is an escape, a sanctuary, a place for my hopes and dreams to live on in characters when I can’t achieve them myself. When I don’t feel any control over my own reality, I retreat and make a new one that I am in charge of. I make the changes I want, whether it’s in people or nature. It brings a kind of relief in the midst of my usual angst and chaos. My friend had actually distracted me from my misery today by insisting we talk about our imaginary lands. It worked. I explained the general plot and brief history of what I have yet to write and she described a variety of mystical races and beasties and showed concept art of a portion of her world as well as the general layout of the land. The rest of the day I was thinking of book things and not of sad things because that’s what this kind of “adult make believe” does. 
    As children, I reckon most of us played pretend and created made up lands, lives, and laws. Why should that stop as we grow older? What fun I’ve had the past couple of days reliving moments of unwritten storylines. How my intrigue has grown from hearing another’s thoughts and ideas around that which does not exist but feels just as real as us. I think it is good practice to keep the mind magical, fantastical, and weird. The same way cursive is there to enhance motor skills, building pretend planets should be done to enhance imagination, creativity, and individuality. We don’t all think the same and I believe that really shows when you let a person's brain run wild into the realm of “what could be”. 
    Earth is boring and dull sometimes. We humans are caught in a mundane routine of meaningless nothing sometimes. We can still make something of our time, even if it isn’t physical. Challenge yourself, create a species, a race, a city, village, or continent. Make up a time period, a new solar system, a supernatural war of epic proportions. You need not even think up a story, just a concept, a character, a place, or event. See where your brain takes you, see where you go, contemplate where you might end up and build the inbetween. 
    All of the stories, the movies, the shows came from someone’s brain. You may not be a writer or an artist or even have a vivid imagination, but you can still be an architect of something whimsical if you let go of this reality. Just a little. It’s fascinating the adventures you can have if you just retreat a few steps.