Soooo what’s up with Dreams?

There have been many things written about dreams.  What they mean, where they come from, why we have them.  But there isn’t one agreed upon answer to any of those questions because well, dreams don’t really make sense.  We drift out of consciousness for the night and we experience images, sensations, and actions in our minds that are all out of our control.  Sometimes we remember them; sometimes we don’t.  And rarely do they make much sense. At least mine don’t.  But for the sake of discussion I’m going to try and see if I can make some sense out of what goes on when the sandman visits me at night.   

One theory about dreams is that they are produced from random fragments of thoughts and memories from the day being sorted out and cataloged in our minds.  This seems to make some sense, since I can say I often have dreams related to things that have happened or I’ve  been thinking about.

For example, I recently had a dream in which my friend Kevin was having a birthday party where everyone that was invited, all friends from high school, were playing a giant game of laser tag in our high school.  It was a pretty sweet dream since laser tag is all kinds of fun, and I was hanging out with some really good friends from high school I haven’t seen in a while (well technically still haven’t seen for a while).  Now the strange part is, Kevin’s birthday is at the end of the month, but I hadn’t thought about it being his birthday because it’s 3 weeks away.  Is my brain reminding me of his birthday so I can send him a card with a laser tag gift certificate in it?  I haven’t played laser tag since I was probably about 12, and haven’t really thought about playing laser tag in who knows how long.  I also haven’t visited my high school in a half dozen years, which might explain why in my dream it didn’t really look anything like my high school, but yet I still knew that’s where we were. But all of these rarely visited memories came together in a dream about a game of laser tag.  Very strange.

So how does my brain put all of these random thoughts, ideas, and memories together into a vivid visualization of a laser tag game?  Do other people have weird dreams like this? Or is it just me.  It would be nice if I could have reminder dreams for special upcoming events and dates so I wouldn’t forget a birthday, anniversary, or appointment ever again.  Hmm I wonder if there’s some way to make that happen.

A second theory states that dreams allow the repressed parts of the brain to be satisfied through fantasy and keep the conscious mind from being overwhelmed by these repressed thoughts.  I guess this theory somewhat applies, since I have dreams about playing competitive basketball, football, and baseball pretty frequently.  I’ve always sort of wished my sports career went a little better than it did in high school and have had some regrets in the way that I prepared myself and approached them back then.  You could say I was a little lazy.  And I’ve always wondered what could have been had I taken things a little more seriously.  What could have been. I’ll probably live out that regret over and over again at night.  Stupid brain.

Another theory presented by the famous thinker Mr. Sigmund Freud says that the brain uses dreams to present difficult and stressful situations to help us control our emotional responses to these situations.  This one also tends to ring true with me in some ways, although my brain seems to place a large importance on some rather minor life stresses.  You would probably be amazed by the amount of flat tire dreams I have.  Flat tires do suck and are not fun any to deal with, especially when you need to be someplace, but they rank pretty low on my conscious brains list of greatest fears.  I’ve experienced three flat tires in my life and since then I’ve become slightly paranoid about checking the air level in my tires each and every time I get in and out of my car.  But I’m more afraid of being mugged, going broke, or losing my hair than dealing with another flat tire.

Or being late.  My second most recurring “nightmare” is being late to something.  In the dreams I never know what I’m late for, I just know that I need to be someplace, and I always have obstacles in my way that prevent me from getting to that place in a timely fashion.  Like a flat tire.  Or not being able to find any pants.  (Yes those really happened)  And I usually end up having to run there. In super slow motion.  When I’m not dreaming, I am a very punctual person, and haven’t really had too many traumatic punctuality events in my life that may have triggered some kind of post traumatic stress situation.  I’ve always valued being on time and almost always have been.  Still, I dream about being late all the time.

Maybe I’m a little more neurotic than I give myself credit for and I worry about these things subconsciously, which is why I’m on time places and I fill my tires with air more than the average human being.  Maybe my dreams are meant to deal with those worries and thoughts because my conscious brain doesn’t want to?  Or can’t?  And it in turn makes me deal with them more in real life?  I guess that could make sense.  I’d just prefer my brain chose some bigger issues to work on, rather then punctuality and tire pressure.

Maybe dreams are really just random fragments of information the brain has stored in its deepest crevices and they get threaded into bizarre storylines while you sleep.  That seems to be the most consistent explanation because most of my dreams are just really strange, nonsensical, hodge-podges of previous experiences, people I know, and past, present and future events.  Maybe dreams are just random firings of our neurons and maybe they do have deeper meaning.  Who knows.

I’d love to relay some more of the odd dreams I have, but you might actually think I’m crazy if you read some of them.  Maybe I’ll save those for another post.  The only thing I can really say about dreams is that I’m glad I have them, I just wish I could figure out how to control them because then I could stop worrying about my tires so much.

Leave a comment if you have some great dream insight, experiences, or can relate to something I said.  I’d love to hear about them.

A Little Ketchup

You might be wondering why this particularly long overdue blog post has America’s favorite condiment in the title.  It’s a lame joke that was designed to remind you how clever and funny I am and why you love reading my blog, and hopefully will make up for the extremely long absence I’ve had (Please nod in agreement).  My sincerest apologies.  Since I haven’t written a blog post in roughly two weeks, this post will catch you up on what’s been going on with me, since I know you are all dying to know (please nod in agreement again).

To start, I’ve been really busy.  Between the time spend working and having recently moved, I haven’t had much time to relax.  Shopping for new stuff for my room, working out, my new kickball league, and trying to remain somewhat social have taken up a lot of my time each week.  Which is why I haven’t had time to keep up the blog.  But I digress.

 The marketing job I landed a few weeks ago is going well so far.  I’m three weeks in and enjoying learning new things and facing the challenges every day brings.  So far most of my time has been dedicated to editing, restructuring, and creating new content for the law firms websites.  I’ve written over a lot of blog and website content related to bankruptcy law and foreclosure defense.  I’ve been building the pages, uploading them to the website and mapping out the interlinking of the site to ensure all the pages are well linked and easy to navigate too.  There’s still a lot of work to do and a lot of pages we still want to create, which gives me plenty to do everyday. 

We’re also in the process of merging a few older websites the firm had into the newer more complete site, so I’ve learned a lot about building websites from the ground up, mostly through trial and a lot of error, and how to merge two sites together while maintaining the quality of the links and SEO ranks for both sites.  I’ve gotten a lot of practice using Dreamweaver, and have a pretty good feel of how it works.

I’ve also created a blog for the law firm which is still slowly making its way off the ground.  I haven’t had a lot of time to dedicate to perfecting the blog, but I’ve written a lot of blog entries that will be hitting the web sometime soon.  There is a lot of work to do to really make this a productive and successful blog, but the challenge and opportunity are very exciting.  And this is only the beginning, once the website is fully integrated and up and running we’ll kick in the social media and other marketing tools to increase business. 

In addition to all of the basic marketing work I’ve been doing I’ve been helping out on the legal side of things.  I’ve learned a ton about bankruptcy and foreclosure and the large amount of people that seem to experiencing either of these situations in Florida.  I tweeted earlier in the week about how it’s been strange getting used to hearing the term “getting served” in a serious context.  When someone is in foreclosure they “get served” their court summons and listening to our attorney or paralegal use that phrase makes me giggle everytime.  I really want to interject “suckas” everytime they say it.

So that’s a little bit about the job which has been taking up so much of my time and preventing me from getting time to write.  It really is so much easier to find time to do this kind of stuff when you don’t have to spend 9 hours at work.  Ahhh the advantages of being laid off.

Anyway, now that we’ve had some time to ketchup I’ll hopefully be able to mustard up some more blog posts in the near future and relish in the opportunity to write the thought provoking and witty stuff that you guys all love. Hot dog.  Thanks for reading, and as always feel free to leave a condiment, I mean comment below!

A few Laid-Off Lessons

Being laid off was not a great experience.  It was the first time I had ever involuntarily left a job.  But I suppose it’s better than being fired.  It wasn’t my fault, I was just a victim of poor financial standing by my former employer.  But unexpectedly having to search for a new job was stressful, although it was pretty nice to have 3 and a half weeks to just kind of hang out and relax.  During my time off I learned a few things and made a few interesting observations with the extra time I had.  Some laid-off lessons if you will.

1. Craigslist is a decent place to find a job. Believe it or not the job I currently have was found this way, and the only other interview I had also came from Craigslist.  As long as you can comb through all of the scams and creepy old men looking for personal massage therapists to work out of their basements you can find the diamonds in the rough.  Craigslist is a free job posting board, while sites like Monster and Career Builder cost money to list jobs, so small businesses and local companies use it to save money.  You may not find a CEO level job here but it’s not bad for lower level positions.
2. I am not qualified to bus tables. That’s right, I couldn’t even get a call back to any place I put in an application.  I applied to well over a dozen part-time, minimum wage, restaurant positions in Jacksonville and couldn’t even get a sniff of interest.  Most restaurants wanted a few years of experience which I sorta kinda don’t  have. I worked five years in food service, not in a commercial restaurant, but five years of food service experience.  Maybe since I was a salaried managed for a major food service company I'm over qualified? Or maybe my lack of experience waiting tables makes me under qualified? Either way I'm undesirable.
3. Jacksonville is really nice this time of year.  I just threw that one in there to rub it in to everyone back home.  70 degrees in January and very sunny.  
4. Reading and writing are all kinds of fun. I had lots of time to write (this blog) and read some good books. And it was really refreshing to spend more time using my brain instead of melting it away in front of the TV.  I’d recommend it to everyone.
5. Working out and eating healthy leads to getting in better shape.  I think everyone probably already knew that, but I actually had the chance to follow through with it for a month at a time.  I lost 8 pounds in a month, which wasn’t really my intention but I guess it doesn’t hurt.  And I kind of like running for an extended period of time again.
6. Learning new stuff is both fun and rewarding!  Okay so that sounds a little corny but it’s pretty accurate.  I taught myself HTML programming and feel pretty smart right now.  I had turned my academic brain off since graduating college so it was good to see it still works.
7. Starbucks is busy at every hour of the day.  I started going to a few different Starbucks in town to get out of the house while writing or working on my programming book at various times during the day, and I always had a hard time finding a place to sit.  There was almost always a line.  And their new blonde coffee blend is pretty good.
8. Red Box was a really good invention. I can remember the days of Blockbuster and paying like $6 to have a movie for 4 days.  Why was that an accepted way to rent movies for so long?  Why did we ever need movies for more than 2 days?  Most people pick up a movie to watch it that day or the next, and once they’ve watched it they’re done with it.  But with Blockbuster you had the option to watch it for 3 more days if you wanted.  No wonder they went out of business so quickly.
9. I like sleeping in. Nothing else really needs to be said about that one.
10. I like money.  Or I like having money.  Well, I like having enough money to not have to worry about spending an extra dollar or two here or there.  Okay, so I don’t know what that actually feels like, but I know what the opposite of that feels like and I know that I don’t like it.  Hmmm. Goal: Make more money. Or win the lottery.
11. Craigslist probably took someone about 10 minutes worth of programming to make. After completing and intro to programming and HTML book I could make a site like Craigslist.  But I don’t think I would change anything about it, because it coincides with the shady nature of many of the people advertising on there.  Maybe that’s what the creator was going for.
12. Don’t ever watch any of the free movies Comcast has available for you OnDemand.  They’re all really bad. I would prefer any SiFi movie over one of those rotten tomatoes.
13. Harrison Ford was in really good shape in the early 80’s.  Watch BladeRunner, you’ll see what I mean. On a related note, I have learned that not everyone that lived in the 80’s was out of shape.

You may find some of these helpful, but probably mostly worthless.  Either way, thanks for reading.  And even though no one ever listens, please, leave a comment. They’re fun.