Dreaming

I remember my dreams.

Depending on who you are this is either interesting or irritating.

I know some people cringe and want to punch the person who starts out "I had the weirdest dream last night." while other people will get excited and want to know all about it.  I'm the latter.  I know some people don't remember their dreams unless they are extreme, and that seems weird to me.  Remembering my dreams has always been a part of who I am and I can't quite understand how people don't remember them.  Scott only remembers his nightmares and I think that sucks.

One of my earliest memories, if not my actual first memory, is waking up from a dream.  It was mostly colors and shapes - oranges and yellows and lots of circles.  I remember feeling confined and thinking I was curled up in one of the circles, sort of like a chick still inside of an egg.  When I woke up I was confused because I knew what I had just experienced wasn't real.  I vividly remember making the connection and understanding what a dream was.  I must have been around 3 or 4 years old and this new knowledge was amazing to me.  I had heard about dreams before but now I understood the meaning.  Of course the idea was formed with the mind of a toddler and wasn't an epic moment in humanity, but for me it was important and incredibly cool.  For some reason I always relate it to Sesame Street.  I think I had seen something about shapes and for whatever reason the dream and the show are tied together.

I have reoccurring dreams. (Does anyone not have reoccurring dreams?)  I find these are rarely fun and pleasant, which is a total rip off.  Why doesn't my dreaming brain want to re-dream moments of pure bliss?  Why does it want to revisit moments of panic and anxiety?

The past few nights I've gone back to The Car With Bad Breaks.  I hate this dream because I never realize it's a dream.  Sometimes when I'm dreaming a quiet part of my brain will realize that it is a dream and go along with the absurdity.  Other times my brain decides that this is for real happening and holy shit.  Those are the dreams that hang out for part of the day and make me feel icky.  I know it was just a dream but the emotions insist on staying put.  This in turn makes me more irritated because I'm feeling emotions that aren't logical and fuck that.

So, The Car With Bad Breaks.  Pretty simple.  I'm driving a car and the breaks work, but not well.  I get to a stop sign or a red light and I have to stamp on the breaks as hard as I can but I don't stop.  I slow down and wind up in the middle of the intersection and then have to decide if I want to speed the rest of the way through or back up.  I usually hit the gas and fly through, hoping there isn't a cop around.  If I decide to back up I will often get out of the car and push it backwards.

 I never panic.  I know that I'm not going to hit anything or get into a car accident.  There are either no cars around or traffic has stopped, waiting for me to stop and then get out of the way.  No one gets irritated with me either, unless they are a passenger.

Once I hit the first intersection or whatever, I begin The Loop.  For some reason it will be important that I stop in the correct place.  Maybe I'm trying to pump gas or pick someone up at a specific spot on the sidewalk or go through a drive-thru.  I have to stop at just the right place, but I miss it.  I have to circle around and try again.  I'll start hitting the breaks sooner in the hopes that I'll finally make the landing in the right place, but it rarely happens.

It's frustrating as hell.

I can feel myself really stamping on the breaks, pushing down with as much force as possible.  I feel my thighs getting tight as I hope that I won't feel the softness of the breaks not working.  As soon as I feel it though I know I'm going to have to keep driving and try to land in the right place.

I start to recognize the street.  This is where I turn left.  This is where the jogger shows up.  Here's the big yellow house.

Other times I begin the loop and skip all that and head right back to stamping on the breaks again.

When I wake up I'm relieved that it was just a dream, I feel tense and frustrated and irritated that the dream's emotions are still there and I'm pissed that I've dreamed the dream again.

Long before this sentence, the people who are fascinated by dreams have torn this apart.  What does this mean about my life and current situation?  Why do I feel safe even though I know I can't stop quickly?  Why do I have to keep trying again and again?  Why do I keep failing?  Why do I have this dream for several nights in a row?

Typing it up or turning it over in my head makes me roll my eyes at the symbolism, or the symbolism that I'm insisting is there.  This is the moment that makes the people who don't care about dreams want to punch me in the head.  Of course I can read into what this dream means.  Of course I can find a connection between it and my real awake life.  Of course I think it means something.  Of course I'm not going to shut up about it and act like it's really important.

Of course I'm going to dream it again and wake up all pissed and then stay pissed because I should be pissed about a stupid dream.

I wonder what will happen if the breaks work one night?

Being A Lazy Writer

You know it's a bad sign when you can't remember where you created your new blog.  The one that you want to write in to get yourself back into the groove of writing.  It's similar to buying a scale to kick off your weight loss goals and then losing it somewhere in the house.  It's probably under a bag of apples that's slowly turning toxic.  The one next to the 5 pound weights that are covered with dust.  And the exercise DVDs that are under a blanket that the cats sleep on.

So here's the thing with me and writing.  I've gotten incredibly lazy.  Like much of media these days, I blame media.  Before Facebook I was updating fairly regularly on Live Journal.  As I started finding interesting/funny/stupid links and clips I would post them there, along with my bipolar ramblings and normal observations of whatever I happened to be observing.

When I switched over to Facebook I began moving the interesting/funny/stupid links and clips there and writing less about anything else.  I'd toss a note up every once in a while but quickly lost interest because they aren't easily accessible after posting.

One thing I love/hate about Facebook is how quick it is.  I'll post something and be done with it, but then later, sometimes even that same day, I'll want to get back to it and it's gone.  My wall and news feed has filled and scrolled and I cannot find it.  I dislike that FB doesn't have a search option for your own page and after a few "Show Older Posts" I give up the search and move on. 

I find I don't even have the will to google it.

I'm starting to fall in love with Twitter, and this is going to, perhaps, make things worse.  Right now I'm mostly retweeting things I find amusing but I occasionally toss out something of my own.  Being forced to 140 characters has made this difficult because of my love of hyperbole and rambling and I worry that I'll cut things down even more to fit the limits.  At the same time this intrigues me because it's the land of one liners.

While I love FB and Twitter, they have given me an excuse not to write.  I'll post something, maybe copy and paste a line or two I find interesting and be done.  Sometimes I don't even toss in my reasons for posting it.  On a few occasions a discussion has started on my page and I've had to go back and re-read the original link to try and remember why I posted it and figure out my response to my responders.  Sometimes I've had to actually create my response because I didn't really think much more than "Hmmm.  I like this." before linking.

I often write in my head during the trips to and from work.  Something will kick me off and I'll write out a FB posting or a journal entry, but when I'm actually in front of the computer I've moved on.  Those thoughts happened at 5PM.  It's now 7PM.  Too late.  I'm no longer interested.  That ship has sailed.

So.

This brings me here.  Do I want to start writing again?  Actually writing?  Things that I find amusing and interesting and not important unless they are important?  Things that hopefully other people will feel the same about?

I do.  Mostly because I love me and want more of me out there.  I want me in you.

This means I need to be here, writing.  I need to pay attention to what I see and hear and get ideas down.

Here I go.