Archives for posts with tag: dreams

Familiar Unknown Places

February 27, 2025 //
0

I didn’t know I was dreaming until I woke. It all seemed quite familiar and very real. I was in a beautifully appointed very modern corporate space, pale hues of bamboo and beige upholstery, live greenery here and there, and fresh, interesting “living wall” accents. The high ceilings and “open office” arrangements were sparsely populated with small groups of Millennial and Gen Z professionals, speaking quietly. Escalators (so many escalators) let from area to area, seeming to cascade downward or rise to new levels around each corner. There were stairs and landings, and small glass offices. There were conference rooms, and the hushed background noise of the ventilation masked the sound of traffic outside.

I knew without being told that this place was in Portland, Oregon. I knew without having to ask that this was some massive corporate “start up” that had long-since outgrown any sort of authenticity, well-established and corrupt. The beauty was all image, no substance. Still, I wandered looking around with a vague sense of purposeful excitement. I felt simultaneously that I somehow “belonged” but was also an outsider.

There were numerous little cafe places here and there, adjacent to working areas. The espresso was hot. The pastries were crisp and flaky. The lines were… yeah. There were lines. lol I waited, now and then, and I wandered. I started at one end of this… building? And I walked the length of it, finding myself aware that it was less like an open world than a specific path, A to B, a fixed journey, no detours or side paths at all, although it often looked like there could be. I reached a place, and a person, and was greeted as a welcome – and expected – friend by someone I vaguely recalled. Didn’t I work with him once at some other place? He invited me to sit, and introduced me to some other, who also welcomed me as expected. Was I there to work? I couldn’t remember changing jobs…but I knew without asking that this place would be paying me a lot of money. I also knew, immediately, that the delights of the espresso, the pastry, and the decor would never ever make up for the corporate hell that this place was going to be…

I woke abruptly, realizing I had been dreaming. Grateful to be where I am, doing what I do. Strange dream. It lingers in my thoughts, reminding me of places I have been, and of former jobs and colleagues from long ago. I find myself wondering what I was trying to tell myself…?

I sigh quietly, looking around this co-work space. Even more modern than the office building in my dream, my current job has no offices at all, anywhere. They are not needed, nor are they truly useful. We work together productively in virtual spaces, and it is enough. Still… the mail has to go somewhere. It comes here. This quiet co-work space with it’s open office space surrounded by small private offices, decorated in pale hues of fake wood finishes, gray carpet with colorful rugs, and “art” on the walls – all copies. It’s fine, and I’m not criticizing, it fully meets the needs of those who use the space, and the artifice tends to be in the decor, instead of in the souls of the people working here. That seems like a good thing.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. I look over my calendar and sip my coffee. I’m fortunate to enjoy the work I do. It’s a routine workday, and it’s time to begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, breathe, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, Moments, Perspective, The Art of Being, Words

The Weight of a Dream

April 15, 2024 //
0

I woke abruptly with a sharp intake of breath and an instant of panic. It was just a dream, but definitely of a sort with the oomph to be alarming. I’d simply dreamt that I was facing an accounting of all the things I’d left undone in a lifetime: broken promises, missed deadlines, failed commitments, moments of procrastination that never became fulfilled endeavors, that kind of thing. It was… a bit overwhelming, honestly. I suspect my dream was simply because today is Tax Day, an annual accounting and a major ritual of modern adulthood. Still, it was seriously distressing to be faced with what felt like an endless list of shit I hadn’t done, failed to do, did incorrectly or at the wrong time, all the missed deadlines, all the broken promises, all the baggage… fuuuuuuck.

I woke in a sweat, feeling disoriented and more than a little relieved to be awake in a here-and-now in which most of what I need to do gets done in an appropriately timely fashion, most of my deadlines are well-met, most of my promises are kept, and mostly things are… fine. Pretty good, actually, and feelings to the contrary are generally an illusion, created by remnants of chaos and damage.

I sit with my coffee, now, thinking over some of the things that my dream suggested are significant (most of it is so far in the past that it isn’t relevant now, if it even was then) – are there things I need to consider, or make amends for? Perhaps. My “to do list” is pretty fucking long, and it’s hard to stay on top of all of it these days. On the other hand, most of the shit that my dream stirred up has no legitimate weight now, and I’m overdue to forgive myself or let it go. Or both. I’ve grown, and some of what used to freak me out no longer causes me stress (because it isn’t worth all that) and other stuff I’ve learned to manage more skillfully. I’ve learned to be less casual with promises, more realistic with commitments, and (mostly) more comfortable with boundary setting. (I could still use work on that…) My perspective on a lot of things has changed, too.

…Funny how much power a dream can have; I thought about this one all the way to work, and only just finished turning it over in my thoughts…

I breathe, exhale, and relax. It’s a pleasant Monday, full of promise. The sky is cloudy and gray, but there are hints of blue here and there. I spent a lovely weekend in the garden, and in my Traveling Partner’s good company. Cooked a couple meals at home. Got in a couple very nice walks. Got the rest I needed to start a whole new week. It’s not fancy, but it’s enough. I think about the high points: a new rose planted, a delightful (and cute, and efficient) new way of storing my paints is in the studio, thanks to my partner’s 3D printing skill, and I managed to tackle all the chores and errands I’d made note needed to be done. A good weekend. I sigh contentedly, and sip my coffee.

…It is a Monday… my work calendar is full. I glance at the clock. It’s already time to begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

Dream a Little Dream

November 18, 2023 //
0

It’s a new day. A Saturday. I woke from peculiarly surreal and also vaguely sexual dreams with a sense of being “interrupted” and also having slept in quite a bit (which is a pleasant luxury, for me). I dressed and quietly let myself out of the house to watch the sun rise from a local trail. It was a lovely morning for it.

Daybreak on a favorite trail.

…I walk on…

Later, as the morning develops along the way.

I followed that with routine errands, arriving home sufficiently early to enjoy my morning coffee with my Traveling Partner while he enjoyed his. We spoke of 3D printers and projects, and things of that sort, until we’d both finished our coffee and it was time to move on with the day.

…My dream(s) still linger in my thoughts, which is a bit unusual these days. I dreamt of kissing a dark-eyed youth in a collegiate stage of early adulthood, who captivated me with his quiet confidence and led me by the hand to some less-than-ideally private place to take things further, only, that turned out to be a local business (?!) that opened quite unexpectedly, filling with customers – young women dressed only in towels, giggling as they passed us. We left, and attempted to find a happy haven “at my place” – only it wasn’t my place at all, it was… the first floor of some bizarre high-rise condo, where the current owners politely explained that they had purchased my abode, and upon breaking through the ceiling discovered 3 further floors above, lavish, luxuriously appointed, and clearly out of my price-range. They were courteously apologetic about how obviously I did not belong there. We sat at their vast kitchen counter in an expansive kitchen that was never mine, sipping deliciously well-crafted espresso (even in my dreams, there is coffee). My dream ended in contemplation of “where to go next”, when I realized I was alone where I stood. No dark-eyed youth. No giggling young women. No urbane well-spoken householders. Just me, standing on a rainy street in the twilight of my dreams. I woke, ready for a new day, simultaneously amused and puzzled by my strange dream(s). I’ve been dreaming a lot lately. Thankfully, few nightmares, just strange surreal dreams.

I’m in enough pain today to feel quite distracted and disinclined to do much, but there is much to do, and I feel creatively inspired… I may spend some portion of the day in the studio, painting, if I solve some of the puzzles involved in the two pieces I am presently working on. Individual paintings take longer these days. They are… more “involved”, and have greater depth of meaning. I think this has been an outcome of going through menopause, strangely enough. My thoughts and my emotions seem to take longer to process fully, but I get more out of them when I “get there”. Emotions have more breadth and depth – and more recognizable significance, with less chaos. Thoughts travel along more tangents and down more rabbit holes, but once every thread is pulled, and every depth explored, I find I have a greater understanding of where I was headed in the first place, and what to do with my thoughts when I get there.

…I sip my coffee and think about how useful all that would have been when I was much younger, stronger, and faster. LOL Life is weird.

My Traveling Partner interrupts my writing to ask me what I’m doing (which I guess I should expect, since I chose to be writing in the living room; a space we routinely share). I answer. Then I manage to interrupt him when he shares a thought, and he sternly tells me he’ll “try not to be annoyed” by that. I manage to refrain from pointing out the interruption to my writing that started the conversation in the first place, which for me is no doubt similarly annoying. I chuckle to myself; we both find a flow state difficult to find or maintain if the other is in the same shared space. It is evident we enjoy each other’s company greatly. I do struggle to set boundaries when I am reading or writing, though, and he rarely seems to recognize that both those activities (for me) require my full attention and focus to enjoy properly, or understand that I sometimes want the full measure of my own attention for myself. I don’t bother to say anything about it (again). Then I wonder if that’s a mistake…

I sip my coffee and move on. Letting small things stay small has real value in life and love, and I’m not inclined to “start shit” on such a lovely Saturday.

I continue to fuss about a particular “how to” challenge with a painting I keep coming back to – it is a self-portrait, so perhaps I am “too close to the subject” in some way. I find myself stalled because it really wants a different technical approach than I typically prefer, and the requirement to slow down, take my time, and work on the practical details with consideration and discipline vexes me. There are no suitable shortcuts! Shit. This one is going to be “do it right, or don’t do it at all”, and this confounds me. There’s something to learn here, and I sip my coffee grateful for the lesson. I don’t suppose learning will slow the inevitable result of being mortal, but I hear it may keep me young(er)… sounds worthwhile.

I sigh outloud and sip my coffee. Age, aging, human life, human mortality… so much more obvious as concerns these days than they were in my 20s. I look at my pillbox… double-checking that I’ve taken everything up to this point in the day that I’m expected (required to). “Fuck aging” I mutter to myself, nonetheless grateful for medical care, and the prescriptions that help me maintain my health acceptably well.

I resign myself to being distracted from my writing; if I want to write utterly without distractions, I definitely need to be alone, and in an unshared space. That’s just real. I chose this location – and I did so because I want to enjoy my partner’s company, and also write. Not sure how I thought that would work. LOL

Well, shit. There are paintings to paint, and dishes to do… I suppose it’s time to begin again.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Allegories, art and the artist, autumn, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Moments, Oregon Trails, pain, Perspective, Practices, Relationships, solo hiking, The Art of Being, turning 60, women

Stalled

May 18, 2017 //
0

I’m slow to wake up this morning, even though I woke quite naturally minutes before the alarm would go off. I almost fell asleep again. My night was restless, interrupted by wakefulness, disturbed by strange dreams of disappointment and sad surprise. The worst of those was surreal and hard to distinguish from “real” and I was glad wake to this world, here.

I had dreamt that my Traveling Partner stopped taking my calls, or coming around. We didn’t divorce… he just…sort of… drifted away and became inaccessible. He chose to distance me, but there was no resolution, no certainty. I woke feeling odd, rather than broken, feeling stalled instead of wounded, and mostly just fairly confused that such a thing could be – or that I could even imagine it. I returned immediately to sleep, and to further strange dreams.

It was a  weird night. This morning I am sluggish and my consciousness creeps along slowly instead of soaring. No headache for now, though, that’s nice. My back doesn’t feel unmanageably stiff, either. Also win and good. 🙂 My coffee is hot, tasty (well, for some values of “tasty”; if you don’t like coffee you would likely disagree). I still struggle to really “get going”. I think ahead to the weekend. The blues and grays of dawn sky filled with big fluffy clouds is breaking up and revealing the possibility of blue sky later. The not-yet-peach-or-pink lines of imminent sunrise silhouette the trees on the skyline. I think about hiking. I think about a piece of land I am looking at this weekend and wondering what the sky looks like from that vantage point? I think about the beach, and wonder when I’ll next see the sunset there. I get all the way to recollections of humid summer mornings of childhood, on the screened in porch, sipping root beer after swim lessons before I realize that my brain is “idling” in neutral. I’m just sipping coffee, gazing out at the sunrise contentedly, as recollections and daydreams flow through my still-waking consciousness. I could so easily return to sleep from here. lol

I begin again. I pull my spine erect and find healthier posture that improves the odds I’ll still be mostly pain-free at the other end of the day. I breathe deeply. I finish my coffee and dance to a current favorite piece of music. The day ahead is the last of the work week for me, now. Fridays and Saturdays will be my days off for some time to come. It’s a good fit for me.

As I wake more fully I feel myself vaguely yearning for… something. A moment. Something specific, but just out of reach… I miss my Traveling Partner. My unsettling strange dream finds me taking a moment to fully appreciate the joy in the relationship we share, and all the ways that we are “there for each other”. We’re planning to spend time together on an upcoming weekend (my birthday). I smile. No doubt that will meet many needs. 🙂 In the meantime, I do my own thing quite contentedly, eyes wide to the wonders that life reveals, and taking care of me. I do miss morning coffee together, or brunch… I’ll have to invite him to do that sometime soon. 🙂

The sun is nearly up. The sky is light, and shades of green, lawn, leaf, and tree, are varied and easily seen as distinct. Streaks of magenta, rose, and violet peep through the trees, separating the blue and grays of the lingering clouds from the blue sky trying so hard to take over the day. In an instant, the clouds are painted in hues of orange all along their underside; the sun has risen fully, just beyond what I can see – but I see the clouds. As I watch the sky change color like a Polaroid, I feel the energy of the day to come fill me up with eagerness.

There’s an entire day ahead!

I am awake. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, Spring, Summer, The Art of Being

An Insecure Fiction

October 9, 2014 //
0

I have moments of insecurity and doubt. They creep up on me unexpectedly, sometimes, and take me by surprise with the intensity of the anxiety riding shot-gun with those feelings. It seems a very human thing to doubt, now and then, to be a bit fearful in the moment, caught momentarily between what I think is, and what I think was or may soon be, and what I expect; I don’t even have to touch reality in my ‘now’ for even a moment…in fact, if I want to feel insecure, filled with self-doubt and anxious, being aware and present in the moment is not the way to go.  I would be surprised to hear that anyone wants to feel filled with self-doubt and insecurity. It’s really not very pleasant, and it seeps into ones experience insidiously.

I had a strange dream, and herein lies the fiction mentioned in the title, because my dream didn’t happen, isn’t likely to happen, and isn’t happening now. In the dream, I woke late, very late, and on the day of An Important Meeting. I grabbed my presentation notes – which was a sheaf of delicate and colorful papers, disorganized in my hurry. I rushed to the office, and abruptly entered the main conference room thinking I was on time – it was filled with people I didn’t recognize, who were obviously interrupted by my entry. I quick sat in the only open chair. Listening to the discussion, I suddenly broke into a cold sweat; this didn’t sound at all familiar, and I didn’t recognize anyone, and the agenda wasn’t what I had prepared for. Worse, it was all being done on technology I’d never seen before – and there I was with paper! I felt obsolete and incredibly insecure. Embarrassed. Out of place. I stood to excuse myself – I was obviously in the wrong meeting. As I politely made my excuses to back out quietly, the meeting moderator said, with a strange look at me, then around the room, “Is someone else presenting your material, then? You’re up.”

Thankfully I woke with nothing more than a pounding heart and a definite feeling of relief that it was only a dream.

Most of my own moments of insecurity and self-doubt are caused by my own thinking. I don’t know what else to say about that. I can choose other thoughts – and I can choose other actions. If I take an action that causes me insecurity solely because it is novel, the underlying need is different, I think, than if the cause of my insecurity is something less tangible…something someone said, or my own feelings about something I said – or may have said – or thought I said. We can and do choose our thoughts. (I’m certainly skilled at saying things that could have benefited from being left alone, but that sort of social faux pas is not terminal, and rarely injurious beyond being discomfiting.)

This morning, waking feeling insecure, anxious, and filled with self-doubt, I chose to think differently. I took time to meditate. I took time to acknowledge that I’m generally doing my best and do practice good practices with an intention of non-harm. I am loved, and capable of loving. This moment right here is a lovely one, and there is no reason to fear it. Within minutes, my heart stopped pounding, and I feel calm and content. I never could ‘pretend away’ anxiety when I suffered with it most. I couldn’t wish it away; it was right there in my consciousness, unavoidable, and looming over every moment. I kept trying to ‘make it go away’ by focusing on it. Doesn’t work – or didn’t for me. It’s a subtle thing, to be open to my own feelings these days, even of anxiety, self-doubt, or insecurity, and make room for them in my very human experience, with compassion for me – from me. Not ‘boo hoo I’m so anxious’, more like… “I feel anxious and it’s unpleasant right now” with a couple deep cleansing breaths, and a few moments of stillness to let it pass, and welcome something else. Meditation has resulted in my anxiety being more like weather than climate. I’m grateful.

I feel moved to write more, but I genuinely don’t have more to say about this, right now. Hot coffee beckons, the morning begins to unfold, and I face the day. I’m eager to get to the office, and that’s more about the people than the work…which gets my attention because I’m very aware I am not taking enough time to cultivate those relationships right now – hell, I’m not even taking enough time for me. I consider that with a certain grim resolve; my traveling partner had already called that out as ‘you’re working too hard’. I awaken to the understanding that he didn’t mean that I am processing to many tasks in too little time during a work shift. He had recognized that I am not taking time for me, not treating myself well, and potentially risking progress and health. Got it. I see it now.

Another sunrise, another new day, another opportunity to savor the moment in front of me.

Another sunrise, another new day, another opportunity to savor the moment in front of me.

Today is a good day to slow down and take things a bit at a time. Today is a good day to savor the moment. Today is a good day for eye contact, jokes, and smiles between strangers. Today is a good day to cherish people who matter, and enjoy work that I love on my own terms. Today is a good day to be professional, without lacking humanity. Today is an excellent day to be human. Today is a good day to change the world.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, autumn, Brain Injury, Healthy Living, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships