Here's something that only one or two people know: When I was a kid, I had an imaginary friend. It wasn't anything like the imaginary friend relationship you see on TV and in movies. My friend didn't have a name or even a face. I would never think of saying something ridiculous like, "Mom, don't stand in front of Jean-Claude!" In fact, I held those kids and their idiotic friends in contempt.

At the time, if someone had asked me if I had an imaginary friend, I would have said no. I never thought this being was real. And as I said, it never had a name. But in retrospect, that's what it was.

My friend was a blank slate. It had no personality whatsoever, and knew absolutely nothing about the world I lived in. So in my head (never out loud) I would have to explain whatever I was doing or whatever was going on, in terms that were simple at first but eventually extremely detailed, really thinking about whatever task it was instead of just doing it. Maybe there would be questions and maybe I would answer them. It was fun to think about things in this way.

This friend stuck around a lot longer than you would think. Most people think that imaginary friends are a toddler thing, and maybe they hang around through kindergarten. This one stuck around well into my teens, and beyond. In some ways, it is still here.

At some point, when I was about 10, the explaining stopped and transformed into a more general type of fantasizing. I guess you would call it daydreaming. But it was still the same feeling -- a feeling of stepping outside of real life and thinking about things from a different perspective. Questioning things. Examining things and wondering why they were as they were, if they couldn't be different, and what if.

To this day, if I don't get some good quality personal time every day to just live in my own head, I kind of go nuts and feel extremely stressed. I've come to the conclusion that daydreaming is essential to my well-being.

This website is a product of my relationship with this imaginary friend. If you think about it, it isn't much different from the one-sided dialog I had when I was 7. The time I spend writing here is a sort of productive, public meditation, among many, many other things.

I've explained on this site before that when I write, I go right out to lunch. The world around me dissolves, and I completely enter a trance which is, not surprisingly, a lot like the trance that you enter when you read a good book or get absorbed in a movie. Suddenly you are no longer sitting on your bed in the lamplight. You don't physically exist at all anymore. You are pure energy.

I think a lot of people have stuff like this, but no one discusses it. Which is understandable because, well, why would they? It's a personal thing.
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