Yet Another Reason I Read

I have an incurable case of wanderlust. Even though, generally speaking, I love my life...I usually want to be somewhere else. If you've ever heard the music from Cats, I'm like Rum Tum Tugger: I'm "always on the wrong side of every door / And as soon as I'm home, then I'd like to get about."

Unfortunately, I'm also poor. I don't have the funds to even attempt a beginning at curing my wanderlust by actually going somewhere. At least, I can't sate my wanderlust by physical travels.

So I take mental travels instead. By reading, I allow my mind to take me to other places: sometimes to existing worlds, sometimes to worlds that only exist--ultimately--in my imagination. (In mine, you see, because even though the author's imagination created it, I'm the one who visualizes it...And I doubt I visualize anything exactly as the authors I read did.)

Reading allows me to forget, for a while, where I'm at. What I'm doing with my life. And allows me to wend my way through a different plot line, a more interesting time. I suppose this is why I find fiction indispensable. Fiction creates an infinite number of places for my mind to go when it wants to be anywhere but here.