The Daily Dosage

…Dreaming… and everything after (and before)

[[This is a follow-up (kinda) to my “Insomnia.” entry, which can be found here.]]

For the past few weeks or so, maybe beginning near the end of January, I’ve been dreaming vivid dreams every night. And when I say every night, I mean literally every single night. Some dreams I remember better, and some dreams they are more like vague blurry memories, but they happen consistently. They don’t occur only at night, but often occur when I nap —heh, mostly in PoliSci 124b or the Science Library— as well.  

These are dreams that vary from: meaning absolutely nothing to me, from seeing a completely fictional person that I must have formulated from a mixture of familiar faces, to dreams that I wish I could just stay in for a tad bit longer.

A favorite dream of mine that I had in the past few weeks is of me playing a strange version of Star Fox on a N64. It was not quite N64 graphics, and not quite GameCube, but I just felt that it was fun. I don’t even remember who I was playing the game with or in whose, but it was just pure, carefree happiness — that in which I can only really remember as a kid. Thats the cool thing about dreams too. Sometimes you don’t know what the hell it is about, but you can feel what it is about.

A lot of these dreams I can control as well. These dreams are my favorite. These are known as lucid dreams, where the dreamer is aware that he or she is actually dreaming, therefore able to manipulate to their liking. 

“Oooh la la… nasty thoughts? ;)”

- anonymous tool from the internets

Nah. Amazingly, I don’t try to do that. Just being able to explore the odd things my head comes up with is funner than trying to manipulate it to be one thing. I have learned from experience that trying to to control your dreams consciously and with too much effort causes you to wake up. I figure it is because you are causing too much stress on the head thinking about it and you just wake up… or, perhaps it is because the dreamer has become too cynical with the experience and the uniqueness just fades away? In either case, you are back into reality.

The best method that I have found to preserve the state is to stay aware of the dream, but also juke yourself to being unsure if its fake, and believe that there’s a possibility that what you are in is just reality. Naivety is the key.

This was just my observation bwhaha. Rereading the above paragraph makes me seem like some drugged-up, narcoleptic, weirdo. [Note: only two of those are correct]

So, what the hell does this all mean?

“Lucid dreaming??”

“Where can I learn these dark arts???”

“This doesn’t sound bad at all!!”

- you (probably)

Nah, I guess it doesn’t. But like I said, I haven’t skipped one day where I haven’t dreamed about something… or felt the presence of a dream. They occur so often that sometimes I wake up mid-dream from my naps and it strangely feels like I’m still asleep. I must admit that that when this happening, it is pretty nerve-wracking, yet pretty fun. ;) [Note to self: If people can read this, then probably I was awake while writing this.. LOL] It is obvious that it is due to the lack of sleep — people dream when they have less sleep, or bad sleeping habits (Nicholson, 2007). All these dreams are definitely a by-product of not getting enough sleep. 

In closing… I’m just way too tired to think of a good way to end this. I will try not to dream tonight, but I know I will. Pretty exciting I guess. I will try to remember the comprehensible parts of it for tomorrow.. or something. I shall try to wake up whenever I wake up (please 10am!!) and be fully energized for another day or studying for Discrete Math at the Science Library. Good night!

-ryan

“We need to go deeper.”