Thursday, January 31, 2013

Lucid Dreams. God. And The Pursuit of Ordinary.


I have been practicing lucid dreaming lately. I've always thought, in the past and even now, that maybe I could figure some things out if I just got inside of my own head... Walked around a bit, you know, take in the sights... 

When I go to sleep at night-- not every night but at least 50 percent of the time-- I've attempted to lucid dream. So far I haven't been able to (I think); but I come close... I often do fall into sleep paralysis so there's a start. The problem seems to be right as I reach the edge of awareness, something very dark, very scary.... very unnerving lashes out at me and I sit straight up in my bed. When I say sit up I mean 90 degree angle, heavy breath; racing heart. If I'm not too terrified I do a reality check to make sure I'm not dreaming.... I never am; though once I may have been... When I started I didn't do reality checks and only recently realized without doing so, I might not be able to tell if I was awake or dreaming. It's not necessarily an image or a creature, but whatever it is frightens me.

 There are other ways to reach lucidity though. Once I had fallen to sleep listening to binaural beats, that music that changes your brain wave pattern. I can't remember much about that experience out side of seeing the purple moon from the video and then the words, "You are dreaming!" blaring into my sub-conscience. I immediately sat up in my bed (there's a pattern in that it seems) and took my headphones off. Why was it so loud? I listened to the music ahead of time to make sure it was low.... I assumed I was just dreaming and managed to infiltrate my own dream with music. Truth is the song wasn't even playing anymore and I had turned down my screen brightness so it was dark, so... yeah confusion. 

I fell back asleep fast and dreamt of biting into a boiled egg only to find a tiny half alive half dead baby chick inside. I had taken a little piece out of its body, a little pink line formed where my teeth had been. I spit it out upset, and had a string of baby chick flesh stuck in my teeth that I had to manually dislodge. As gruesome as that image might seem... It wasn't so much while I was dreaming. It was more comical than anything else. Disturbing... but comical. 

I guess I'm looking for answers; I'm always working towards self improvement. Every time I think I've built myself a steady foundation, I later find it to be missing key pieces I thought it had. I want to fix it. I want to fix me.

A few people have told me I should be looking to religion for help. I say, it's not my time to discover that. God and I already have an understanding; a spiritual connection and it has been an integral part of my survival thus far. Other people say it's all in my head. I kind of agree with them.... (duh! that's why I'm trying to get in there!). I just feel... that if I can manage to get off of my self loathing rear and do a few things with my writing, I could be...


I bet you would like to know how that sentence was suppose to end. Just know I wrote it; rewrote it and rewrote it again. There was no possible way for me to write that sentence, without giving it a morbid ending. How terrible of me.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Collegiate Postpartum Depression


Hi,

My name is Bree and I suffer from Collegiate Postpartum Depression or CPD for short. What is that you ask? Oh, it's just a terrible horrid disease that is currently afflicting my every being. Symptoms include loss of hope in finding an actual career, boredom at current job, anxiety about the future, excessive hobby joining behavior and --sometimes-- extreme procrastination.

How's that for an opening paragraph. Sometimes I feel like I have little to nothing when it comes to talents. There was nothing special about me in elementary school. I remember my best friend back then loved to draw. Even if she's not a well know or even a struggling artist now, I remember that being her passion and she was pretty good at it. Not so for me. High school came around and once again no special talent fell upon me. 

 Now that I have put in the four... five... oh let's not play the counting game... but the numerous allotted baccalaureate years in order to get my adult green card, I feel even more further from my life purpose than ever before.

Everything I'm good at EVERYONE is good at. I honestly don't feel special in any shape or form. In fact, I have plenty of things I need to work on; so many I don't even know where to start. Ancient Bree Confucius wisdom states, "In order to have a hand in being successful, one must have a hand in successfully having a hand in being successful." 

No one ever said it made sense. 

Even though I am not suppose to measure my success with any one other person's, I can't help but feel like I fell asleep before the big race and now am playing 'catch up' for what will probably be the rest of my 20 something life. Even Hank Hill from the well accepted television show 'King of the Hill' felt he had a life purpose in selling propane and propane accessaries. As mediocre as it may have seemed, well, those items weren't going to sell themselves.

I just feel like 'we', whomever we are, have this destined for great things feel about our lives, but overlook the fact that we are missing a few key components when it comes to making it to said destination:

  1. Tried and true belief in ourselves
  2. An actual path to follow
  3. The willingness to work hard for our dreams
  4. Dedication
  5. Ability
  6. Luck and the list goes on...
And on and on it seems. That list goes so far on that I think I'm afraid to see where it ends. Maybe Hank and I have more in common then I give credit. I don't want to be an actress, or an orchestra music... player person ( I'm sure there is an actual name for it). I just want to have something, a piece of that pie. Start something, work hard on it, and reap the benefits of it; just like you would a farm. Plant a seed, nurture it, and harvest the crop. I honestly just don't know how I'm going to get to that point.