Blargh.
So I fail at this blog challenge, that is clear enough. Friday's post was a cop-out, and then I missed yesterday's post, which was an additional "what I wore today" day, because I was visiting family all day... and it completely slipped my mind.
Today's topic is "my dreams". I'm not sure if it's meant to be about my goals/aspirations, or my nighttime forays into my own psyche, so I'm going to go with the latter.
Lately, my dreams have very clearly been centred around my anxiety. There have been elaborate labyrinths, puzzles, and nonsensical problems that need solving, and a cast of characters who are modelled mostly after my family. I have a tendency to try to analyze my dreams when I wake up and am still in the midst of that sleep fog, before the details disappear... I'm sure this only adds to my neurosis, but it is what it is.
We watched inception recently, and it reminded me of how often I experience lucid dreams. Very frequently, I will me in the middle of a completely crazy dream, and I will become aware that I am dreaming and will feel like I need to influence the dream or direct it a certain way in order to try to figure out what it is my subconscious is trying to tell me.
See how I over-analyze things, even when I'm not awake?
The topic of dreams, and why we dream, has always been very interesting to me. I enjoy reading about the research of sleep and the studies done on the sleeping brain. I find it so interesting to watch documentaries on the subject, or segments of NOVA that talk about sleep research. I like that we haven't really figured out why we need sleep yet, or how exactly dreams come about. I sometimes which I had tried a little harder in high school to focus on my maths and sciences, and become a neurologist or psychologist.
Years ago, I used to keep a notebook by my bed so that I could write bits of my dreams down before I forgot them, thereby being able to look up symbols and meanings in a dream dictionary and try to interpret things, but I have since given up this behaviour. Mostly because I feel like it is a silly, fruitless practice that only leads me to dwell on things that are best left as they are.
I am not a very good sleeper. It is difficult for me to fall asleep, and when I am woken up suddenly, either by a nightmare or a noise in the night, it is really hard for me to fall back asleep. There is always this track running in my mind of things that need doing, and things that I want to think about... and when the plot of a crazy dream is added to that, I can sometimes fixate on whatever it was about. I've noticed that since I've been on the Effexor, the dreams have been a little kookier than they used to be. Maybe it's a side-effect, or maybe it's just my brain trying to work things out and heal itself.
Who really knows?
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