Although I’m paraphrasing Shakespeare’s Hamlet, this article is NOT about thoughts of suicide.
This is about dreams and more specifically how they’re completely knackering and weirding me out.
There’s quite a lot of evidence to suggest that creative people experience more vivid dreams and can pass between wakefulness and a dream-state quite easily, even to the extent that they sometimes have difficulty differentiating between the two. Some details about a 2003 study can be seen here.
Now, I love dreaming. I sometimes try to influence them by having pleasant thoughts when going to bed. Tropical beaches, winning the lottery, getting a writing award etc etc. I try to avoid anything sexual though. Then sleep becomes impossible and lying on my front definitely so. (TMI?) 😉
Do I enjoy the bad ones? In a strange way yes. Any experience has its value (Somewhere. Sometimes you have to look very hard to find it.)
My only beef with these ‘extreme’ dreams is that they’re hurting me. After battling alien monsters, bad guys, nasty landlords etc I often wake in the morning to find I have a sprained wrist (I know what you’re thinking – no, they’re not sex dreams) or muscle and bone aches that can’t be explained. I feel like I’ve just done a tour in Afghanistan or (definitely a dream) had too hard a workout in the gym.
What I really like about vivid dreams is that I get to live and do a lot more than I have or would like to do. I travel to countries I’ve never been to. I do activities that aren’t available to me or are even possible. For example I’ve flown (without a plane) over prehistoric landscapes and been to brothels in Victorian London. (Sometimes twice in one night.)
I’m not sure how long I can keep this up. One more dream about The Great British Bake-off might finish me off. You can only strangle Paul Hollywood and decapitate Mary Berry so many times…
When my time comes I may actually be able to say, ‘I’m ready. I’ve done EVERYTHING!’.
I may even have finished Hamlet…
SpyKeyOne 