Tag Archives: dreams

Birthday post: Going sane

I’ve loved the song above for a long time. And to my mind, it harmonizes with my theme tonight.

This will be my birthday post (my age is for me to know and you not to care about). In honor of this auspicious occasion, I’m going to break my custom of putting commemorative posts up on the day of the event (so it’s too late) and post it the day before (so you’ll have time to get me a present).

Also because I have something to say that may be significant, and I want to share it. It’s been about three weeks now, and that fact suggests to me that the effects I’m seeing may be permanent.

I believe I’m going sane.

Nobody could be more surprised than I am. Let me tell you about it.

First of all, I think I won’t be surprising anyone when I say that I’ve always been a little… weird. Socially. Depressive. Awkwardly shy. Unable to make eye contact. Easily offended. Not one to pick fights, but one to distance myself, taking refuge in solitude. My great plague has been intrusive thoughts – shameful memories that came into my mind and would not be ignored. I knew of no way to handle them except to face them, experience the full shame, and then try to find something to distract me from them.

This was tremendously tiring for me. In social situations, half my energy got wasted in dealing with those intrusive thoughts. This was how I lived.

Then something happened to me, about three weeks ago.

The deadly dream airport

Photo credit: Digby Cheung@dbyche1016

I remember a dream I had last night, which is a rarity for me. I remember it because it disturbed me enough to wake me up.

I was in an airport. A ticket agent (or somebody) had just directed me toward the gate I needed, and I had to hurry. So I rushed along the walkway, toward a descending stairway ahead of me.

But as I approached the stairway, I had the sudden conviction that this wasn’t a stairway. It was an edge. Beyond that edge there was just open space.

I suddenly dropped on my face, and peered over the edge. Sure enough, I was at the end of a sort of mezzanine floor without a guard rail – a dangerous arrangement no real-life airport would contemplate.

But as I looked down, I suddenly heard someone (a young person, male or female, I’m not sure) running up behind me. They were going very fast, and I had no time to warn them before they shot over the edge and plunged to the floor below. Not necessarily a fatal fall, but surely injurious.

Then I woke up.

I have theories about what that dream meant, but I’ll let you speculate.

I applied for a job today. I won’t tell you what it is, except that it involves editing. But it seemed (in some ways) ideal for my skills and personality, so I took a chance.

I was half way through the application when I saw that they wanted me to link to a Google Doc of some of my editing work. And I thought, “Forget this. I don’t have Google Docs.”

And my brain replied, “Wait, haven’t you used Google Docs before? You have an account. Check it out.

I checked, and behold, I do have a Google Docs account. I created the link.

I’m rather proud of myself for not chickening out (for once). But boy, I make this hard for myself.

What we do with our dreams

Sorry I didn’t post last night. I got into customer service purgatory with my antivirus provider. Oddly, I didn’t have to wait on hold at all; it was the actual work that took forever. Of course I had to yield personal control of my machine to some guy in India, which I wouldn’t gladly do even if he were in Minneapolis. But I’m pretty sure that if I’d tried to follow instructions to do it all myself, I’d have ended up just running to Micro Center and buying a new computer.

The Sensation

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about my post on The “Lover’s Concerto” music clip. I’m still watching it – not as many times a day, I guess, but it never fails to run a semi-physical thrill through me, along the shoulders and up my neck to the brain.

I’ve had such reactions to various things in my life – often to music (“The Theme from Exodus”, Roger Whittaker’s “The Last Farewell”). Sometimes to art, such as a painting of a Viking ship in a history book my folks bought us once. Sometimes to books, like a couple of passages in The Lord of the Rings. Sometimes to scenery – my favorite was, and remains, a day when the sky is a leaden blue-gray but the sun shines brightly through a gap onto the trees and grass, so that they glow against the iron background.

If I had to explain my life – the choices I’ve made, the successes and mistakes, I’d say that my lodestar has always been an impossible beauty. One that can never be attained in this world, but that can never be forgotten either, that drives unending effort for something that I know can’t be completed, but which for some reason does not make me despair.

And I don’t think I’m alone in this. Continue reading What we do with our dreams