Colm O'Regan: Daydreaming is good for you - it lets me be Roy Keane’s midfield partner 

Pic: Roger Kenny

Sorting clothes has become humdrum again. During lockdown, it was a prized job we flipped a coin for. Because it provided about an hour of me-time in a period of lots of us-time. You got to go upstairs and do a job so in theory, it was house-work. But my wife and I both knew it was practically a working holiday.

Usually, if I won the toss, I’d have a podcast on to distract me because sorting clothes is tedious. Squinting at faded age-labels to see whose tights and vests and knickers were whose and that was just the grown-ups. There was a huge pile of children’s ones to do then.

But latterly, I’ve just started day-dreaming. It’s good to be back. I haven’t left as much room for day-dreams because I tend to just think about bad things and before I know it, I’m imagining a mushroom cloud regretting not getting more tinned food in.

If I force myself I can get myself onto familiar territory: Sport. The nature of my sporting day-dreaming has changed over the years. When I was small, anything was possible and hadn’t realised that most things end in failure. In the 80s and early 90s when cycling was The Thing We Used To Win Things At, I daydreamed the Tour De France. The Dripsey to Coachford road was my chance to attack from the front of the imaginary Peloton. 

Commentator Phil Yates excitedly noting I was pushing the big cogs (of my Raleigh Triumph with the three Sturmey Archer gears) on the hill up from Dripsey bridge to put some distance between me and the Columbians before eventually crossing the finish-line at Murphy’s shop.

The cycling day-dream very quickly became unrealistic, so I switched codes to football. Over the years I’ve played a number of imaginary roles on the pitch. In the early 2000s, I was Roy Keane’s midfield partner in the Irish team. I was the less tempestuous one, the slight number 10 who could unlock a defence. Basically Wes Hoolahan but being selected regularly. In one extended multi-episode day-dream, because I understood the Corkness of the situation, I actually persuaded Roy Keane to come back to Saipan and we won the World Cup.

These days I’m obviously too old to day-dream playing, so I retired to become a really perceptive and funny imaginary pundit.

When I come back ‘into the room’ an enormous pile of washing has somehow been sorted. I feel like day-dreaming might be good for me. And that’s one thing I love about the Internet. Whatever your opinion, you can find something to back it up. When I google “Daydreaming is actually good for you” sure enough there is a study saying it is. The study was called ‘What Makes Thinking for Pleasure Pleasurable’ published in Emotion magazine. 

I’m already intrigued that there is a magazine called Emotion. It’s a proper scientific journal that publishes articles on the study of emotion so it looks like they’re doing what they say on the tin. The study suggests that we don’t do enough thinking for pleasure. In effect, people are often bad at daydreaming. Note: Not bad for daydreaming or an awful fella for the daydreaming or away with the fairies. Just technically not proficient at day-dreaming.

Day-dreaming, when it doesn’t catastrophise, and focuses on meaningful and positive things can give you a positive experience. Other scientists, elsewhere in Scienceville, have found it can improve innovation at work. I was going to read the details of that study but my mind wandered.

But the main thing is to think of day-dreaming as a skill in itself that can be improved. I’m off now to imagine being a world champion again.

But this time at day-dreaming.