My Go-To

 By Robin Weaver

Happy New Year, Everyone!

My go-to activity when I want to relax/de-stress/cheer up/regroup or just relieve boredom is the same now as it was when I was five years’ old.  Imagination.

Granted imagination has taken different forms throughout the years. When I five, I imagined I was older and no one could make me go to bed. And while I stayed awake long after the tyrants who determined my bedtime, I created stories in my head.

When I was eight, I imagined I was Marie Curie. Even then, I knew radiation was a bad thing, thus my inventions were more practical. One could argue, I wasn’t Marie Curie at all, but hey…I was eight.  Anyway, I imagined inventing a phone that didn’t need a cord, one I could take with me anywhere and with a projection that actually created an image of person on the other end of the line; yes, projection—wasn’t smart enough to imagine a tiny screen. I really did envisioned this marvel prior to smartphones, but even in my wildest dreams, I didn’t imagine this same phone would be a camera, a television, a thesaurus, a news program, and a search engine with answers from all the world’s encyclopedias.

When I was a preteen, I had a friend who slept in a coffin. Not a real coffin, but a wooden box with a twin mattress he pretended was a coffin. I tried to imagine what he imagined. Guess my imagination wasn’t that good.

After I started actually writing my first novel, I imagined becoming a best-selling author. It was a nice fantasy. Now, I imagine finding a dozen beta readers who actually wanted to read a novel.

These days, I channel my imagination into glassworks—fused, mosaics, and stained glass. I look at a piece of glass and imagine it as something else. And when I really stretch my imagination, I imagine I’m much better at it.  Like most things, glass is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration, so after the creative process becomes work, I imagine I wouldn’t rather be on the sofa watching the latest series on Amazon Prime.

Today, when I’m not envisioning my next glass project or creating a new character for the novel I swear I’ll finish in 2025, I imagine a world where Heath bars are healthy, watching Netflix burns calories, and

neither Trump, nor Kamala exist. Instead, our government is led by a Churchill type person with no hidden agenda and a workable plan to get us off fossil-fuels. (BTW, he looks like Henry Cavill).

Too far-fetched?  Hey… Once-upon-a-time I imagined a phone that didn’t need a cord—that phone is now a conference center/health monitor/scheduling genius/movie theater that also allows me to communicate with the world.

Wishing you every stretch of your imagination in 2025.

Robin