The dawn of future’s past

While it seems either unlikely or somewhat contrived, I would have to say my best quality and my worst quality are actually the same thing – my imagination.

I love the fact I have a good imagination.

It lets me write stories – stories that are (I am told) quite good and worth reading. It puts ideas in to my head (such as what would happen if Pennywise landed in Hogsmeade, rather than Derry? Or what would happen if The Doctor met Rory first, and Amelia joined them later? Or what would happen if Anne secretly fell in love with Diana, rather than Gilbert?) and then I find that I have to get the ideas out by writing them down, and telling the stories they have provoked.

(I would imagine that Gilbert and Matthew would have no problem with Anne falling in love with Diana, that Marilla might possibly have a problem, and that Mrs Lynde, Charlie Sloane and the collective Pyes would lose their minds completely).

It lets me solve problems – the survey application I am writing, for example. Every time I come across a problem, I can usually solve it by coming at it sideways. Of course, it doesn’t work all the time, but being able to think in circles and to be able to turn the box in to a pyramid or a sphere is surprisingly helpful and can lead to some truly beautiful code and a fairly decent application.

(And I am just realsing that is the second time I have referred to source code a thing of beauty and wonder. But that is probably something that needs exploring in future entries, since it is not related to what I am writing about now).

I like that it lets me do surprising and romantic things for my girlfriend when she least expects it. It is her birthday in a little over a week, and I think I have managed to find something that she will not be expecting and that she will like a great deal. I also have a backup present, equally surprising and sweet, but I am hoping I only have to use that if the first one doesn’t arrive.

In short – I like that I have a good imagination. It opens up endless vistas of possibilities, and makes my world a far more interesting and entertaining place.

But – as it turns out – like almost everything in life, an imagination is neither good nor bad in and of itself. No – what makes it good or bad is how you use it. 

And while I like the good things I can do with it, there are times I wish I could not think my way out of a cardboard box, and could not write a story with all but the last word written for me.

Because ever since my sister was killed twenty one years ago, my imagination occasionally takes me to some very bad places.

Not dark, scary places, before you start to worry. I don’t find myself sitting alone in the dark, plotting the death of my enemies, nor do I dream about the most entertaining and interesting ways to shuffle off this mortal coil.

In general, the bad places it takes me are all about what is happening to other people. 

For example, if I e-mail my parents about a coming family dinner, and they don’t respond for two or three days, I start to wonder if something has happened. Or if they are supposed to phone and they don’t, my mind flashes to all the things that might have happened (car crash, gas explosion – that sort of thing). So then I go to the BBC news website to see if there is anything, and when there isn’t, my mind winds down again and stops imagining things.

For a while. 

The same thing happens with other people in my life, and sometimes other occasions. Every time we have to do a full scale reboot of The Hive, my brain starts to think up all the possible things that could go wrong when we try to turn the system back on. (And this is a time when having a lot of experience is kind of a bad thing too, because before I knew all the things that could go wrong, I wasn’t able to imagine all the things that could go wrong). 

And the thing is, I know that I am just imagining this for nothing :-

My rational mind knows that it is remarkably unlikely that my parents’ house has exploded for no apparent reason, or that the reason Jane hasn’t arrived in work probably isn’t to do with a freak tornado whisking her car off to Kansas. My rational mind knows that I am letting my imagination run riot, and that I should bring it under control.

But unfortunately, once my imagination gets going it is generally able to completely overpower my rational mind. 

Which, as I said, is good for solving problems and writing stories, but not so good for sitting around thinking about the worse that can happen. 

(Especially when you have already experienced the worst that can happen and are all too aware it can easily happen again).

So my best quality is my imagination, and it has made my life so much better. 

But it is also my worst quality, and sometimes makes my life fairly terrible.