What was that weird dream trying to tell me?
So my dream last night went like this:
I’m driving our silver family SUV a 100 mph on I-95.
Cindy and all the kids are tucked in the back seat. My laptop is open on the front passenger seat. A draft of a blog post waits patiently on the screen.
We’re surrounded by bright orange bigger-than-usual-tractor trailers.
Cindy and the kids are sing/scream:
I’m a savage
Classy, bougie, ratchet
Sassy, moody, nasty
Acting stupid, what’s happening?
What’s happening?
True to name, the laptop is now on my lap. I’m writing. And driving a 100 miles per hour surrounded by giant orange tractor trailers while my family continues to sing/scream.
I’m driving on a bridge now. The speedometer reads 100 mph. I look down and type something and then look out the window. There is a deer, a doe to be exact, swimming just below the water’s surface. I can see the length of her body. She is brown and marked with white spots. Her eyes are black and wide and they stare hard into mine.
The orange tractor trailer in front of me slams on its brakes. Giant red break lights flash. I slam. My entire family explodes through that wedge between the driver’s and passage seat. And even though they smash into the dashboard they continue singing/screaming:
I’m a savage
Classy, bougie, ratchet
Sassy, moody, nasty
Acting stupid, what’s happening?
What’s happening?
The black-eyed doe swims out of sight. My right foot pins down the break pedal. There is a high rubber-skidding-across-concrete sound. Brake smoke clouds the front windshield. The SUV stops. My family, all 4 of them, are lumped in the passage seat. The smoke clouds drift away. I can see out the windshield. The tractor trailer that was in front of us is gone. We are sitting at a traffic light on I-95. My dream self thinks, “A traffic light on I-95, this is weird.” The traffic light holds red, my family stares at me and I look down at the laptop and begin to feverishly write.
The next morning, while the coffee brewed, I opened my laptop, the one in the dream, and went to dreambible.com. Now, I don’t know if this is a reputable “dream interpretation” website because, in my opinion, I don’t know if there are any reputable “dream interpretation” websites.
Nevertheless, I begin researching the images of my dream:
Driving: represents full control of decision-making or the direction a situation you are experiencing is taking. Controlling or navigating the direction in life you are headed. Increased feelings of controlling outcomes or your destiny. Whoever is driving reflects the quality or aspect of yourself that is influencing your current path.
To dream of driving too fast may reflect risky decisions or pushing yourself to dangerous limits.
Tractor Trailer: represents decisions or self-control that are unstoppable. Choices or a direction in life that is “to be reckoned with.” Choices with the potential to cancel out all opposing forces or obstacles.
A tractor trailer truck may reflect a moment of big change where you can easy eliminate problems without resistance. It may also reflect a problem with the potential to totally wipe you out.
Traffic: represents frustrations with delays that you are experiencing. Decisions you’ve made are not progressing as fast as you’d like. You feel stuck where you are in life.
Traffic Light (Red Light): that a person or situation needs you to wait or hold back for the moment. You may feel held back or impatient.
Family: To dream of a family gathering represents an important decision that you may be considering. Weighing all options. It may also reflect how you are confronting a decision that you’ve already made.
Family singing/screaming “Savage” by Megan Thee Stallion: no results found
Writing: to dream of writing may reflect feelings about what you or someone else is honestly thinking being noticed in waking life through actions. Noticing total honesty about someone’s true thoughts by their actions. A final expression of what one is thinking through their actions. Realizing the truth.
A swimming doe: no results found
So what does this all mean? I don’t know. Do I trust the dreambible.com and it’s interpretations? Not really.
But right now, as I write this sentence– my two sons tumble into the once quiet living room and begin to wrestle. They’re rolling around on the floor. Someone slaps someone. Someone laughs. Someone cries.
I look up from my laptop.
“Stop.”
They don’t stop.
In the kitchen, my daughter stands in front of the refrigerator, with both doors flung open and shouts, “There’s nothing to eat!”
Cindy pokes her head in the living room and asks what I would like for dessert tonight: cinnamon cake or fudge brownies?
I stop writing and think about last night’s dream, What was that weird dream trying to tell me?
To put it mildly, 2020 has been bizarre. A Dali painting. A year of melting clocks. A year of distractions. A plague, civil unrest, social distancing, remote learning, remote graduations, remote weddings–a total disruption to our daily lives. Mandatory mask wearing, a shortage of toilet paper and hand sanitizer and coins. The bankruptcy for Chuck E. Cheese, the death of Kobe, and the threat of murder hornets. And personally, in 2020, my ataxia has become friskier– tickling my vision, balance, speech more than ever before.
I look at the laptop. Cinnamon cake or fudge brownies?
In both my dream and reality I’m attempting to write a blog post but my living room, my body, and the world I spend my earthly time swirls with distractions.
And distractions, both internal or external, are the greatest threat to achieving personal success. Our precious attention gets pulled from our work as we attempt to end these distractions.
If I can hike up my corduroy pants *offer up my best Freud interpretation for a minute: I hypothesize my dream is about trying to do (or me) the meaningful work of writing despite a daily onslaught of distractions.
*There is no evidence Sigmund Freud wore corduroy pants. This is just the work of my imagination. All the images I found were photographs from the mid-torso up. There’s a possibility he didn’t wear pants at all. He was a pretty strange dude.
If I learned anything about being a writer who’s also trying to be an attentive father, a thoughtful husband, an active patient, and a dutiful citizen– it’s that we have to get comfortable doing our work in a world of distractions.
This is especially true for any earthling trying to do meaningful work in 2020– when the there’s a plague on the loose and the traffic is relentless and the kids are screaming and your wife wants your opinion about dessert (and it’s not even noon!) and there’s swimming doe, just beyond the window, with big black eyes staring hard into your soul.
Be well,
Jay
PS– I choose fudge brownies!
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