It could be due to QL1 or EV4, but whatever it is, I recently seem to have an urge to understand how a lot of decisions made in my life have been driven by some sort of desire to connect with many images that I had been exposed to and that I had been fascinated with . I grew up in an era before the Internet and smartphones and at that time my visual media were like photos, paintings, newspapers, books, television, cinema, posters, advertisements and the personal computer
It was not just looking at images that fascinated me - I think I had a very vivid imagination and loved reading both fiction and non-fiction. My fascination with history, which gave me many opportunities to use my imagination to recreate historical scenes in my mind, made me do a minor in the subject in my university days. For much of human history, there were no photos and little paintings for us understand what the world before the 19th century. I was fascinated by stories of merchants from various kingdoms and empires sailing in boats to distant lands to sell all sorts of exotic goods. Even a mention of certain goods being traded like maybe turtle-shell, birdâs nest, deerâs antlers or rabbit fur would just spark off some images in my mind.
I was therefore fascinated with anything that was written with vivid imagery even if there were no graphics. Words alone as well as phrases in any book could trigger my imagination if they were written in the right way and were about certain topics (usually non-technical stuff). Unfortunately, I found mathematics and the sciences too dry since the textbooks I was exposed too were written in a very boring style that did not really spark my imagination. I took biology in high-school and unfortunately many biological terms did not spark my imagination for some reason - I guess that was why being a doctor didnât interest me. I wouldnât have enjoyed being a lawyer either, since legal terms canât seem to spark off my imagination.
Even people who had a descriptive manner of speaking with lots of imagery fascinated me more and I would listen to them more and I was bored with people who were too technical in their conversations.
When I graduated from university and was wondering about the direction of my career, I was really fascinated by vivid descriptions of jobs/careers available . Job advertisements which were too straight to the point and could not allow me to visualize the working environment just by reading turned me off quickly.
So now I think back, many choices that I made in life were due to the fact that I wanted to do something which could stimulate my imagination. In fact, I wanted to do something in the creative field like advertising or marketing but yet felt that I was not creative enough, plus social pressures forced me to go into working on a job which required more left-brained thinking.
One of the jobs I enjoyed working in the past was as a market researcher for a news agency researching on travel retail. While as a market researcher, I had to be analytical and rigorous in my thinking, I was fascinated by the descriptive writings of my colleagues and bosses were largely journalists. There was so much beautiful and descriptive writing about business in exotic countries, travelling and interesting retail brands that I was often living in an imaginary world and once in a while would forget the true purpose of my job. Coupled with very beautiful photographs and advertisements on the company website, looking back, I think I was often âdrunk in my imaginationâ.
Interestingly up till today, in my professional life where I would be playing with numbers, figures and statistics, every time I come across certain words, my imagination would spark off, and I would try to visualize the the words.
For example, my work may require me to do market research on retail activity in various geographical regions and obtain information about a list of cities in a certain country. In this situation, whenever I just look at the word for a certain country, a certain city, or a certain retail category (e.g. wine, toys, souvenirs, luxury cars, etc), my mind would start flying around and trying to visualize something instead of focusing on numbers and statistics which I am supposed to do.
Iâve mentioned my interests in photography a few times here I think. In fact, these days, I find photography a means of expressing my imagination of historical events as well my imagination of events and places in certain parts of the world. I am still trying to find a means of actually expressing my imagination in fact, but I will get there one day.