Dreamcatcher

     Nope. This blog has nothing to do with the film "Dreamcatcher", which I haven't seen and don't plan to. I made the picture above a while back, but I never found any place to really use it. I think it visually fits the subject of this blog though. A few years ago I curiously began writing the dreams I was having the day after I was having them, just to see in a controlled and conscious form what they looked like. It's interesting to see what your mind manufactures without your active consent. I had stopped logging my dreams out of pure laziness. Recently, I began logging them again. I love it! It's crazy! What is also really wild about logging your dreams after you have them is that your mind acquires the ability to recall the dream in vivid detail. I even found myself remembering vividly dreams I had weeks, months, and even years ago! It's as though once you make an active effort to remember and record your dream, that floozy part of your memory that so easily forgets dreams seems to kick on and start a full-on recall.

     When I first started logging my dreams years ago, I actually tried to make sense of them in an almost narrative format. This time I'm logging exactly as I remember without attempting to manufacture any sense of it. Honestly if you didn't know it was a dream I was recalling, you'd think I was on a serious LSD trip. I've now recorded my dreams for a consecutive 2-weeks. In looking back on them, as jacked-up and backwards as they are, it becomes easy to identify the "hows" and "whys" of what I was dreaming. There are plenty of publications and websites out there that call themselves "dream dictionaries" and claim that every element within a dream has a deeper meaning. I used to buy into that idea, but reflecting on my dreams I've had in the last 2-weeks, I can identify exactly where most of the elements came from and surmise as to why. That whole, "if you see a bare tree in your dream, that means your soul longs for an unfulfilled desire" doesn't add up anymore. Sure reoccurring dreams mean something, but typically it's more obvious and literal than some deep form of symbology. I dream that I'm in school a lot. This isn't because my subconscious misses school or some crap like that, it's because I spent 17-consecutive years of my life in school and now I'm not, so I suppose my mind is conjuring up old remnants and memories of life as a student. It's the same for dreams about the workplace. There is no hidden meaning there, it just means that you spend a lot of your time at work, so that's what your brain coughs up.

     One thing that is slightly disconcerting about logging your dreams day-after-day, is that your memory becomes slightly muddled and you start to get your awake memories confused with your dream memories. I found myself in this state a few times and have started logging my dreams in moderation. I was even explaining a dream that I had to someone while actually in a dream. I highly recommend that people give this a try, even for a little while. It's really fun and interesting! It's almost like recording the memories of a part of your life that you had no active control over, or a television series that is so complex and random that you can't anticipate what the next episode will be. Who needs TV when you've got your dreams! Give it a spin!

     I wasn't going to say it because it would be cheesy and cliche, but... "sweet dreams."