Tread softly
This is a psychological experiment of sorts.
In several ways.
The past four years have given me a new appreciation for sleep. My insomnia has worsened to the point where the slightest of noises can startle me awake, and at this point, the conditions I have to meet to reach even stage one sleep are so ridiculous that they are dangerous for my health. It is particularly difficult in the summer. I hate birds now. I hate fans and air conditioners. I hate my own heartbeat and the ringing in my ears, left over from ear infections I had as a child.
There are admittedly times when it can feel enlightening. Twenty-four hours without sleep, for me, is actually one of the few things that makes me feel a little happier. But it's short-lived; forty-eight hours without sleep induces hallucinations that are often nightmarish and beyond that is both mental and physical torture. Anyone who tells you he has been awake for three days or more on a consistent basis, if he is a functional human being at all, is lying.
According to my early estimations, I was getting three or four hours of sleep every night, waking up an average of three times. But considering what I had learned concerning sleep, that didn't make a lot of sense to me. I was still dreaming every night, which meant I was getting REM sleep. Like many people, I forgot my dreams shortly after waking, and I started to wonder whether they were merely the drowsy transition between dreaming and awareness, rather than actual dreams.
The only way to check was to keep a notebook close to my bed and record each dream immediately after waking up. Provided I glance at my watch, it would also afford me the opportunity to get a rough estimate of how much time I spent sleeping. I was, at the time, a firm believer in the activation-synthesis theory of dreaming; that it is an artifact of evolution, serving little useful purpose. Dreams, according to activation-synthesis, are random firings of neurons that our mind attempts to assemble to make sense. There are no hidden messages, no premonitions, and little window into our unconscious desires.
The initial attempt at keeping a dream diary helped me realize several things:
1) I was getting four to five hours to sleep, but almost never in increments of more than an hour. My consistent waking was keeping me from getting healthy sleep.
2) I was very wrong about dreams.
Once I could retain the content of my dreams in memory, I realized that there were too many recurring landscapes, too many familiar, invented characters, and too many thematic elements for everything to be a coincidence. There are arguments for the reasons behind this, I suppose; perhaps people who better understand themselves by receiving messages from their deeper brain were more effective at surviving for some reason. The science behind it is flimsy, and this comes down to faith, I have to admit. But I still had to know.
Unfortunately, there were too many obstacles to maintaining the diary in a dorm room. I had too many disturbances during the night, and often, I wasn't getting REM sleep at all.
I am going to try again now.
I have miserable for over four years now. It isn't just the sleeping- it's so many things, all of them seemingly insurmountable, no matter how hard I try at changing. I need answers. I need to know things about myself. And while I'm cynical enough to believe that I'm only going to get those answers from within me, I have enough pride to believe I can get them. I suppose if I didn't, I probably wouldn't be alive.
I will record every dream here that I have exactly as I remember it.
I suppose the people who know me will find this strange; I've always hated livejournal and almost any place where people reveal deep, personal information about themselves. I'm distrustful of it and seems likely that most people are using it merely as a method of manipulating the people they're close to.
I'm not too worried about it anymore. A few experiments with some now deleted fritolayman entries have revealed to me that people are either not reading what I put on this site or are unaffected by it. I don't expect almost anyone to find this, let alone try and hack into it. Oddly enough, most writing I put on the Internet has more popularity with people I've never heard of who happen upon it by chance or through searching somehow. And honestly, I'm not going to make this easy to read; I'll be referencing previous entries and God knows that I'll be sporadic about it enough to make it even more difficult. Anyone who actually finds and keeps up with this deserves to know whatever they read, even if it is only for sheer morbid curiosity or to use as advancement for his or her own personal drama. I will not be hiding names or assigning people numbers or utilizing any of those passive-aggressive conventions I hate, and if I sound desperate at any point, it is not because I am seeking your pity.
If you learn something about me here, then fine, but try harder to learn something about dreams in general or yourself. I guess I don't really care what you're doing here, or if there is anyone here at all. This is a selfish project, which is the only purpose livejournal has.
So, you should know what you're doing if you decide to “friends” this thing. You've been warned.
In several ways.
In several ways.
The past four years have given me a new appreciation for sleep. My insomnia has worsened to the point where the slightest of noises can startle me awake, and at this point, the conditions I have to meet to reach even stage one sleep are so ridiculous that they are dangerous for my health. It is particularly difficult in the summer. I hate birds now. I hate fans and air conditioners. I hate my own heartbeat and the ringing in my ears, left over from ear infections I had as a child.
There are admittedly times when it can feel enlightening. Twenty-four hours without sleep, for me, is actually one of the few things that makes me feel a little happier. But it's short-lived; forty-eight hours without sleep induces hallucinations that are often nightmarish and beyond that is both mental and physical torture. Anyone who tells you he has been awake for three days or more on a consistent basis, if he is a functional human being at all, is lying.
According to my early estimations, I was getting three or four hours of sleep every night, waking up an average of three times. But considering what I had learned concerning sleep, that didn't make a lot of sense to me. I was still dreaming every night, which meant I was getting REM sleep. Like many people, I forgot my dreams shortly after waking, and I started to wonder whether they were merely the drowsy transition between dreaming and awareness, rather than actual dreams.
The only way to check was to keep a notebook close to my bed and record each dream immediately after waking up. Provided I glance at my watch, it would also afford me the opportunity to get a rough estimate of how much time I spent sleeping. I was, at the time, a firm believer in the activation-synthesis theory of dreaming; that it is an artifact of evolution, serving little useful purpose. Dreams, according to activation-synthesis, are random firings of neurons that our mind attempts to assemble to make sense. There are no hidden messages, no premonitions, and little window into our unconscious desires.
The initial attempt at keeping a dream diary helped me realize several things:
1) I was getting four to five hours to sleep, but almost never in increments of more than an hour. My consistent waking was keeping me from getting healthy sleep.
2) I was very wrong about dreams.
Once I could retain the content of my dreams in memory, I realized that there were too many recurring landscapes, too many familiar, invented characters, and too many thematic elements for everything to be a coincidence. There are arguments for the reasons behind this, I suppose; perhaps people who better understand themselves by receiving messages from their deeper brain were more effective at surviving for some reason. The science behind it is flimsy, and this comes down to faith, I have to admit. But I still had to know.
Unfortunately, there were too many obstacles to maintaining the diary in a dorm room. I had too many disturbances during the night, and often, I wasn't getting REM sleep at all.
I am going to try again now.
I have miserable for over four years now. It isn't just the sleeping- it's so many things, all of them seemingly insurmountable, no matter how hard I try at changing. I need answers. I need to know things about myself. And while I'm cynical enough to believe that I'm only going to get those answers from within me, I have enough pride to believe I can get them. I suppose if I didn't, I probably wouldn't be alive.
I will record every dream here that I have exactly as I remember it.
I suppose the people who know me will find this strange; I've always hated livejournal and almost any place where people reveal deep, personal information about themselves. I'm distrustful of it and seems likely that most people are using it merely as a method of manipulating the people they're close to.
I'm not too worried about it anymore. A few experiments with some now deleted fritolayman entries have revealed to me that people are either not reading what I put on this site or are unaffected by it. I don't expect almost anyone to find this, let alone try and hack into it. Oddly enough, most writing I put on the Internet has more popularity with people I've never heard of who happen upon it by chance or through searching somehow. And honestly, I'm not going to make this easy to read; I'll be referencing previous entries and God knows that I'll be sporadic about it enough to make it even more difficult. Anyone who actually finds and keeps up with this deserves to know whatever they read, even if it is only for sheer morbid curiosity or to use as advancement for his or her own personal drama. I will not be hiding names or assigning people numbers or utilizing any of those passive-aggressive conventions I hate, and if I sound desperate at any point, it is not because I am seeking your pity.
If you learn something about me here, then fine, but try harder to learn something about dreams in general or yourself. I guess I don't really care what you're doing here, or if there is anyone here at all. This is a selfish project, which is the only purpose livejournal has.
So, you should know what you're doing if you decide to “friends” this thing. You've been warned.
In several ways.