The Guilty Pleasure of Daydreaming.
I am so tired of feeling guilty for daydreaming. There are lots of words for it: procrastination, avoidance, unproductiveness. I have to admit that I spend time daydreaming every day.
I had just lost my job due to budget cuts in public media, a first in twenty years. I woke up with no specific to-do list. After a year of being embroiled in the fight to save public media and moving forward an agenda for ethics and accountability in the documentary ecosystem, my job was eliminated. Going from the front lines to being fired felt like a betrayal of the values of public media. More painful still, it was a massive layoff, a disruption of the trusted nonfiction storytelling that held up a mirror to America and allowed us to see ourselves—a rejection of a pillar of democracy.
So, daydreaming seemed inert. There was the guilt of waking up after 9 am, meandering down to College Ave for a coffee, popping into the bookstore and buying a book, knowing I'd have time to read it, then rushing home to furiously review job possibilities that concerned colleagues were sending weekly.
I had to be brutally honest with myself. "I don't really feel motivated to do much right now. The world is broken." While I have made a career as a creative global problem solver and storyteller—as an Emmy award winning film producer, Executive Director of a global non-profit, and academic, not to mention my most coveted role of mom to my two grown kids—all roads led to the reality that the most pleasurable, peaceful part of my daily life had become visioning my future: writing, cooking, reading. omg, what is happening to me?
The guilt was so crushing that I began to explore the advice of many positivity-gurus: to tell a more empowering story about it. As a huge believer in the power of words, I began by renaming my daily activities. Not procrastination, I called it visioning, meditating, or aligning with my inner voice. It sounded a lot better in answer to the question that others often asked: "So, what did you get done today?"
Aside from sounding good, I noticed that I began to feel better about how I was spending my time and actually began to value it as a time of decluttering my mind and a sort of restful resilience. I started getting clearer about what I was honestly committed to. From these moments of peaceful indulgences, I began to see and experience my life and myself differently. I really took time that I had never allowed myself—to just be present to my accomplishments. To stop long enough to look at my journey and what I learned along the way. What I wanted to share with my kids who could, in the next decade, actually have their own children… I began to see that I had options. That I could pursue things that mattered to me now. And so I did. It did not happen overnight, but this time became a beautiful period in my life in which I finally gave myself permission to just BE and to allow a new vision for my life to take hold.
Reflecting on my life, the lessons learned over the last two decades led me back to my journals, my own films, and the hundreds of hours of conversations that comprised my work. This process led to the creation of a new framework for living in an age of uncertainty—an age of artificial intelligence that some say will change everything. Here is what came to the surface:
Sharing myself with others—the good, the bad, the ugly. I learned that the best way to live is to live ‘out loud’ and enjoy authentic connection. Prioritize it, seek it, and allow it in.
Maybe it is not just me; maybe we all need to be liberated from the brokenness of the world and join in a new world.
So, I set about distilling my life's lessons—from hundreds of hours of leading town halls, interviews for films, working with United Nations communities, and raising kids—into a new framework for living that meets the moment: a new ‘operating system’ for humans that I have been living and testing on a daily basis. I have become a participant in my own social experiment, becoming a Fluent Human TM.
So all of my meditating, daydreaming, visioning, and reflecting has paid off. I no longer feel guilty about it. In fact, that blissful state that I indulged in is now the foundation of the Fluent Human Framework: WONDER.
I have actually persisted in dwelling in WONDER as I created the Framework. This includes hiking through nature, savoring a stew of excellent flavors, travelling and reading and rereading poetry that keeps me in wonder. What I used to label as wasting precious time has actually been key to identifying access to our human superpowers, which lie dormant beneath a sheath of guilt, cynicism, confusion, disappointment, disgust, self-deprecation, apathy, hopelessness, distrust, and anxiety—a plethora of negative self-talk that keeps us all from liberating our full human selves.
The first pillar of the Fluent Human Framework is the source of all others. It is free, it is abundant, and can be found everywhere on the planet. WONDER does not negate the fight, the problem-solving, or diminish tyranny. It does, however, allow us to envision a better world, invest our time in things with lasting value, and perhaps move beyond survival. Make no mistake: Wonder is not the only solution; in fact, the other four pillars of human fluency fuel a human future that is liberatory and helps to generate new levels of synchronous, fulfilling experiences.
It comes to us so naturally when we are kids, in the form of curiosity, and then it is shut down so quickly as we learn to “grow up.”
My book, coming soon, Calling All Humans is the culmination of two decades of researching, documenting, reflecting, and conversing on what makes a human fulfilled at the level of self, community, and globally. I started with these simple questions.
So how do we return to wonder as adults? How do we make it not just something that happens to us accidentally, but something we cultivate intentionally?
Here's what I've learned:
Keep your eyes, heart, and mind open to inexplicable things. Things don't have to make sense to be worthy of your attention. In fact, the inexplicable is often where wonder lives most fully.
Build trust in your instincts. Allow yourself to be guided toward what amazes you. Trust that pull, that curiosity, that sense of "I want to know more about that."
Notice what inspires curiosity. Pay attention to what captures your attention. These aren't random attractions—they're clues about who you are and what matters to you.
Let the universe reveal things. Stop trying to control every outcome. Create space for serendipity, coincidence, and unexpected beauty.
Document your wonder. Take photos. Write in a journal. Tell people about what amazed you today. The act of documenting reinforces the neural pathways of attention and appreciation.
Share wonder with others. Wonder multiplies when shared. Tell someone: "Look at this bird. Listen to this sound. Smell this flower." Mutual “startlement” creates profound connections.
Seek out nature regularly. Our bodies know they need this. Even brief periods in natural settings—as short as 15 minutes—can reduce stress hormones and improve well-being. This isn't mystical; it's biological.
Read poetry. As poet Ada Limón says, poetry helps us "look closely at what does matter," and when we do that, "it's very hard not to see" both the beauty and the struggle of being human.
