“You’ve got too much imagination for your own good.”
I heard that sentence more than once as a child. Usually said with a sigh, a raised eyebrow, or one of those knowing looks from an adult who clearly thought I needed to be a bit more sensible. I didn’t fully understand what it meant, but the message was clear enough:
Imagination, according to the grown-ups, was something that needed managing.
Containing.
Taming.
There’s a photograph of me on a beach that I’m using for this week’s social posts. I’m sat in the sand, hair wild in the wind, building something with the complete focus only children have. I had nothing special to work with, just wet sand, a bucket and spade, and belief. I wasn’t thinking about whether what I made would last, whether anyone would like it, or whether it was “good enough.” I simply imagined something, and I made it.
That little girl didn’t know she should be sensible or realistic. She just built.
Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, many of us lose that. We don’t lose imagination entirely, we just tuck it away, like a toy we think we’ve outgrown. We replace it with what looks responsible: getting things right, staying inside expectations, being reliable, and doing what’s expected of us. All useful, all necessary at times… but none of it replaces imagination.
For me, that “too much imagination” label followed me quietly into adulthood. I grew up, I worked in the public sector, I raised a family, I supported Andy through 27 years in the army. I learned to be practical. I learned to show up. I learned to be strong. But somewhere along the way, I forgot how to build something just because I believed in it.
Then a robot made from scrap appeared on our kitchen table.
He had a spy-camera head, opera-glass eyes, and copper-wire hair. He wasn’t polished, neat, or perfect. But he was full of character. Full of possibility. Without meaning to, Andy had made something that brought imagination back into our home.
I felt it instantly, a spark, a memory, a return to something I once knew very well.
That little girl on the beach hadn’t disappeared at all. She’d just been waiting for me to notice her again.
This is something we forget as adults: children don’t wait to feel ready to imagine. They don’t wait for the right tools, the right qualifications, the right timing, or the right opinion from others. They just start.
Adults wait.
Children build.
And sometimes the most important thing you can do is remember what it felt like not to wait.
I’m often asked why Weebert’s World matters to me so much. It isn’t only because Andy makes these incredible robots from scrap, or because I love writing stories. It’s because I want children to grow up without feeling like their imagination is something “too much.” I want them to see creativity not as something extra or optional, but as something essential. A tool for problem solving, for invention, for joy, for mental wellbeing, for resilience.
I want adults to remember that too.
People sometimes think imagination belongs to children. But building a brand at 60, with no previous experience in animation or publishing? That has required more imagination than anything I ever did as a child. Not because I know how to do it, but precisely because I didn’t.
Imagination isn’t silliness.
Imagination is building a life you haven’t lived before.
Imagination is deciding that “too much” creativity might actually be exactly enough.
And if you’re tired, as most of us are, the answer isn’t to stop dreaming. It might be to remember the life you once promised yourself. The one where possibility mattered more than practicality. The one built from wonder.
Imagination isn’t something children grow out of.
It’s something adults need to grow back into.
So if you’re reading this and you once had a dream, an idea, a whim, a hobby, a plan, a story, a “silly” thought people told you to tone down or tuck away…
Please don’t bury it.
You don’t need perfect tools to begin.
You don’t need permission to start.
You just need curiosity, like the child on the beach.
You need belief, even if it feels rusty.
And you need to start building something, even if it washes away, because the joy was never in the result. The magic was always in the making.
with love
Lotty x
