I’ve been trying (not always succeeding, mind you, but trying really hard) to spend less time on “social” media. But one sometimes still needs a bit of mindless scrolling now and then, am I right? 💁🏼‍♀️ In that regard, my new favorite scroll space is real-estate websites, where I peruse (and, let’s be honest) critique all the interesting-looking houses I can find for sale in our favorite not-here places.

And because a house’s value often depends on its location (and because I’m super curious), I’ve developed a corollary obsession with taking “walks” — through neighborhoods and downtowns — on Google Maps’ street view.* Touring a place this way also involves a bit of time travel since the street-view snapshots might be several years old, and some views might even be stitched together using snapshots taken several years apart. This can be an informative but slightly disorienting experience for sure, where you get the impression of movement but nothing actually moves or changes (unless the view jumps from last year to three years ago and the house you’re passing by is suddenly a different color) … and where cars sometimes have too many wheels (IYKYK).

The really disorienting thing, though, is visiting those places in real life after “walking” around them virtually. It’s almost as though you already know the place, but it’s so much more alivethan you remember it.

On the flip side …

I often look through an imaginative lens at our own backyard, our neighborhood “woods,” and any other landscapes we drive or walk through. Seeing what is actually there, of course, but also giving my imagination free rein to see what could be there. And that “what could be” is where my stories often begin.

Imagination is our superpower, allowing us to be curious, look beyond the ordinary, ask “what if,” and discover everyday magic hidden in plain sight.

So even if you, like me, are slightly obsessed with virtual walkabouts, keep looking at the realworld through an imaginative lens — and keep reading imaginative stories — because, as the saying (sort of) goes: nonfiction = learning through facts, but fiction = learning about the world through imagination.

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* As an aside, my online street-view walks often remind me of when Konstance goes exploring via her ship’s onboard library, in one of the several intertwined stories/timelines in Cloud Cuckoo Land. Have you read it? It’s a devastating, heartbreaking, and hopeful books … and so, so beautifully written. As many of my favorite books are, it’s a love letter to the power — the necessity, really — of books and stories.