Dream Journal: Month 1 Overview

Friends,

I've written in the past about the awesomeness of dreams. The topic came up again about a month ago in a group setting, and a friend taught me some ridiculous but fascinating theories (maybe more than theories?) about dreaming, particularly lucid dreaming. 

One example: if you want to have more lucid dreams (dreams in which you're aware that you're in a dream), cultivate a habit of looking at your hand while you're awake. This might cause you to look at your hand within a dream. And, as the theory goes, in a dream you won't have the right number of fingers. If you notice this discrepancy, you'll possibly realize you're in a dream and (ta-da!) welcome to lucid dreamland.

I came out of that conversation with one thought, a thought that has led to this blog post: "I need to keep a dream journal."


Dream Weaver
And by 'weaver' I mean 'journal', but you gotta love the Gary Wright tune

The idea is pretty simple. I just keep a piece of paper and a pen next to my bed. Any time I wake up in the middle of the night or morning and I have a memory of a dream, I write down a summary. All other benefits (like increasing my lucid dream capability) aside, it's just really fun.

But I've found there are several distinct types of entries in my drournal (that's not going to catch on, is it?). There are basically three categories:

1. The chicken-scratch hieroglyphic?  These dream summaries come from deep (way down deep) in the middle of the night, those groggy hours where light and rational thinking dare not go. I have no memories of these dreams, and in many cases I can't even read the handwriting.
2. The remembered dream.  These entries are marked by decent penmanship and a memory of what actually happened in the dream. But sometimes it's just one detached, miscellaneous scene.
3. The Homeric saga.  These epic synopses usually come in the morning when sunlight is in my room and I can see what I'm writing. They sometimes involve 2 or 3 separate dreams I've had over the course of the night. These are the dreams you daydream about.

As this is just an overview, I'll limit the number of examples I share. But I want you to get a picture of what my dreams and descriptions are like, so share I will...

1. Indecipherable nonsense 

• "sleeping at Mom's ['char'], not quite right"
• "in movie; lightning fight; the girl "[scribble scribble] PG-13"."
• "Wheeling Park High School fire evacuation. Fill out form for firefighters"
• "[Seth Myers] Jim Carrey, my Dad, Zach, and me in movie scene at a beach hotel"

2. Fleeting memories

• "Chris shows me innovations in channel surfing"
• "Pirates vs. 'Chicago Reds'; I run into Michael Jordan, who tells me McCutchen is out with an injury"
• "Mike and I do a huge group presentation in a gym about Tangent Space(s)"
• "Bob swims with a missile as swimming training from his in-laws"
• "car drive-thru laser tag game"

3. Near-unbelievable epics

• "Movie trilogy -- zombie attack. In hotel, shoot zombies in throat. Two factions-- guy from Eureka (not my faction). Joke -- 'I like your annotation...'." /// In this dream, I was in the first movie of a zombie trilogy. I made the important discovery in an elevator that you must shoot the zombies in the throat to permanently kill them. Two human factions emerged, one in favor of total war and one in favor of exploring other avenues. The leader of the war faction, played by an actor from the sci-fi show Eureka, made his point by joking in response to my 'shoot the throat' discovery that he liked my annotation on killing the zombies, and that we should form a few sub-committees to decide whether or not to act on that finding.
• "Barney/Ted house, statue, fake face, theft. Fight --> real house." /// This tiny description summarizes an epic dream of deception. I was Ted from How I Met Your Mother, and Barney Stinson (played by Neil Patrick Harris) tricked me into wandering through a strange house. He eventually took off a fake face and revealed himself, and we got into a physical altercation. I went back for revenge the next day, only to find a family living in the house! The family called the cops when they discovered me in their home.

So far I'm not convinced the frequency or quality of my dreams has changed noticeably, but it's cool to be able to remember more of my dreams. Without a dream journal, I'm pretty sure I dream every night, but I almost never remember them. Now I do-- or at least I wind up with some funny writings.

The shared dream

I pretty much made it through this entire post without one reference to Inception

Do you remember your dreams? If so, what's a crazy one you've had?

What do you think of keeping a dream journal?

Jon

But HOW is it going?!?

Friends,

It's getting old, how I keep taking a few months off from blogging only to come crawling back to you begging for your forgiveness, comments, and blog ideas. And so instead of groveling and pleading for those three things (but mainly the last two, if you wanted to know), I'm just going to forge ahead. 

And forging ahead, at the moment, is looking pretty exciting. I've accumulated some potential blog topics, and I'm ready to get back to more frequent Tangential adventures. And I should have plenty to write about, as I'm currently planning my wedding (which is, of course, a nicer-sounding way of saying that my fiancee is planning my wedding). I'll keep you posted soon on whether we plan to commit any of the cardinal sins of lame weddings: parts one two three.

But after such a long break, I think I need to ease back into the blogosphere. So I hope you'll join me as I inspect one of the least helpful phrases ever spoken by human beings since the dawn of verbal communication.


Answer my question!!!
With information that wasn't already implied by the existence of my question, punk

We often speak in pleasantries. "Small talk". I've gone on record that I don't really like this practice to begin with. But let's lay that argument aside. Small talk is a part of life. And occasionally, it's an annoying and baffling part of that life.

One of the most common questions when getting into small talk gear is, "How's it going?" While in this pure form the question is undeniably vapid (sorry, I forgot I was getting off that soapbox), the phrasing is often used for very real moments of inquiry:

How's the new job going?
How's it going living with your in-laws?
How's the crusade against "How's it going?" going?

These are real questions meant to initiate segments of conversation. But one common phrase, somehow only becoming more popular by the minute, stops these blossoming conversations dead in their tracks. In case you haven't Sherlocked it yet, I'm talking about

"Oh, it's going..."

Yeah, I know it's going. That's why I asked how it's going. Like, when you know there's something, but you want to know more about that thing, so you ask a question about it... that's not some secret way of asking if the thing exists.

How was the movie last night?
Oh, it was a movie...

What do you think of DiCarlo's pizza?
Oh, DiCarlo's has pizza...

What time is the baseball game?
Oh, the baseball game occurs at a time...

This is a total non-answer. Yeah yeah, I'll make a few concessions:

• Usually there's a widening of the eyes and a sad nod of the head accompanying this verbal waste of time. This, I think, is meant to imply that the thing in question is progressing in an intense or cumbersome way. But I'm not a mind-reader, people.
• Sometimes people do follow it up with real information. "Oh, it's going... my mother-in-law keeps making pointless small talk with me, so I try to spend a lot of time at the new job or eating DiCarlo's pizza during baseball games." But sometimes people don't even do this; they seriously just say that it's going. And even when they do elaborate, it makes the opening phrase pointless. It becomes just an annoying filler akin to "It is what it is" or "Can I ask you a question?"

"Tell me how you really feel."

Not sure if I stressed this enough: comments and blog ideas

Have you committed the grave error of saying "Oh, it's going..."?

Which everyday phrases bother you?

From an ESL website: "People who ask this phrase are usually trying to start a conversation."