Image: bingo card labeled "bad at being a person bingo"
For the sake of describing this card through a narrative, the columns from left to right will be letters A thru F, and the rows top to bottom will be numbers 1 thru 5.
Squares
1A: i don't know wtf is going on
1B: LOOK AT ALL THE PRETTY THINGS OMG SHINY
1C: elaborate daydreams
1D: something is wrong but i don't know what
1E: why is my backpack full of rocks and papers from a year ago
2A: puts things down; where'd it go
2B: scared of human
2C: having a body is weird wtf
2D: is suddenly really good at a particular thing for 3.2 days
2E: i'm tricking people into thinking i'm one of them
3A: am i just not trying hard enough
3B: doesn't eat; why do i feel bad
3C: error 404 motivation not found
3D: stares at wall for an hour
3E: walks out into the snow without a winter coat
4A: "why can't you do this?" i don't know
4B: on second thought that was a terrible decision
4C: time goes slow and then fast
4D: walks into wall
4E: World's Most Messy Room
5A: sorry i didn't respond to any of your messages for six months
5B: weird sense of humor
5C: how do i tell if people like me
5D: how are other people so good at talking
5E: idk if i'm coming off as creepy all the time
Edit: I just realized that I absentmindedly relabeled the columns from BINGO to ABCDE. I like mine more anyway.
If I didn’t have aphantasia I’d probably have row 1 box 3 marked as well. I get lost in thought, but it’s more logistical planning for eco transformation type stuff (how to convert parking garages into hydroponic farms and the like)
Also messy room is whole house, and I’m doing a lot better with that, but as a kid I cleaned my room with a rake more than once.
Is there a rule that daydreams have to be visual? Spending lots of time thinking up extremely detailed strategies for unlikely hypothetical scenarios definitely qualifies as "elaborate daydreams", in my opinion.
Idk, that’s always how you hear them represented. I just assume there’s a visual component to get people “lost in thought”, cuz while I drift away, most of what I’m conscious of is how I no longer have a way to rejoin a conversation; anything I’m thinking about would require explanation, but I’m aware of what’s going on around me generally.
Being aphantasic and not realizing it until I was… in my late 20s..? Really called a lot of things into question and I still don’t have answers for them. Like the phrase “close your eyes and picture…” I used to think it was like..metaphorical? Turns out they actually mean picture the thing in your mind.
I think visual daydreams are just the most common type, so that's what people tend to describe. I don't have aphantasia and yet I often find myself getting lost in imagined conversations with people I know, or mentally rehearsing how I would teach/explain something, or trying to optimize a build or loadout in whatever video game I've gotten interested in lately. None of that feels any different from a typical daydream in terms of experience; I'm just using my imagination verbally or logically instead of visually.