Dreams, Productivity and the Lack of it, and Remembering What's Important
I had some interesting dreams today ...
Last night I dreamed about this fifteen/sixteen year-old girl named Debbie, which was short for Debra. She lived with a woman who was like Ellen in looks and temperament, but I don't think it was actually supposed to be Ellen. But basically, Debbie was really a Winchester, and the woman - who was *not* her mother, but I'm not clear on who/where her mother was - was watching her for her father, John Winchester. Somehow Debbie found out that she had two older brothers, and decided to go track them down. I've forgotten now exactly how she found them, but basically she finally did and somehow ended up traveling around with them. At some point they did actually learn that she was their sister, and they accepted it and her, although things were kind of awkward at first.
Where the dream got interesting was at Sam's wedding. He was getting married to a girl named Sarah (I think she was supposed to be the same Sarah from season one, but she didn't look like her other than being brunette.), and for some reason Debbie had decided that this meant her brothers were going to split up and/or not let her travel with them anymore, and she was going to have to go back to the orphanage. (I have no idea where this thought came from, 'cause she wasn't actually living in an orphanage.) This pissed her off. So she attends the wedding, remaining all quiet and pissed off while Sam and Sarah are enjoying wedded bliss and Dean is beaming in pride for his little brother. When the wedding reception came around, everyone's got their champagne glasses, and Dean makes his toast as best man. What no one noticed right away is that Debbie was secretly pouring more alcohol into Dean's glass. After like, two glasses, Dean has this huge cheesy grin on his face because he's SO incredibly drunk, and he says 'Wow, this is some damn good wine.' Sam and Sarah are trying not to laugh at him, when they finally notice what Debbie is doing. Sam is desperately trying to keep a straight face in front of Dean while trying (and failing) to scold Debbie at the same time, while Sarah is just shaking her head and trying not to smile because Debbie is clearly not sorry for what she's doing and Sam is trying to pretend he doesn't really think it's hilarious - which he clearly does.
Somehow, this turned into Debbie getting arrested. She was being arrested for something to do with copy write infringement, something about a book that was sort of a memoire from Dean and Sam, and that Sarah had illustrated? But she was getting arrested because she had been trying to get it published, and now she was going to be executed for this. (I seriously don't even know.) Sam gets all freaked out, and he and Sarah end up going with Debbie to the police station, which means the three of them are squished into the back of the cop car together. Sam is trying to get Debbie to tell him what's going on and what was up with the whole getting Dean drunk thing, and ends up all confused when he finds out why she's being arrested, because there wasn't any copy write on this memoire book they'd been making. Which is when Sarah confesses that *she's* the one who put a copy write on it, because she thought it was a good idea, and now she feels all horrible because this wasn't supposed to happen. This turns into Sam finally getting Debbie to confess about what she's been so upset about, and that she thought they were going to split up and abandon her. There was this absolutely *adorable* moment of Sam, still all squished into the back of the cop car because he's way too tall to be back there, picking up Debbie and putting her in his lap (despite the fact that she's a teenager and not exactly all that tiny herself) so he can give her a big hug and assure her that he and Dean are *never* going to abandon her, and that him getting married doesn't mean they're going to get rid of her. And Sarah was agreeing that it wasn't going to change what the three of them had been doing. It was a very sweet moment all around. ♥
They end up at the police station and everybody gets out of the cop car to see Dean, who's all upset about what's going on and then gets all angry/hurt/worried when Sam explains what Debbie had been thinking, and there's more sibling cuteness while Dean assures her in his 'What are you, stupid?' way that he's not getting rid of her, either. ♥
Then John shows up. He'd heard about Debbie getting arrested and was coming to fix things (how I have *no* idea). Along with him was this *other* Winchester kid Dean and Sam had never known about - apparently in this dream John was spawning all over the place - only this time, it was their *oldest* brother, who was actually even older than Dean. Even better, it was actually Billy Cranston from MMPR. (Probably around season two, because he was wearing the wire-frame glasses instead of the giant dorky ones.) Sam, being Sam, is totally cool with this new brother/yet another random sibling from nowhere, and he and Billy exchanged a big hug and were chatting away with Sam translating Billy-speak while Dean and Debbie are staring at them both blankly. Then Billy smiles brightly at Dean and greets him as 'little brother', which clearly weirds Dean out seeing as he's always been the oldest. He sort of awkwardly greeted him back, and then Billy kind of glomp/hugged him, which was hilarious because Dean went all stiff and awkward with his arms trapped at his sides while Billy's hugging him and this totally freaked out 'WTF do I do now?' look on his face.
At which point I woke up laughing.
Seriously, I was actually grinning when I finally managed to open my eyes. My first thought was that it was like watching a bad fanfic, because there were random OCs and crossovers everywhere, and siblings popping out of nowhere without explanation. And no one thought any of this was weird. I can still picture the huge cheesy smile from DrunkDean, and Sam all squashed into the cop car and trying to hug his sister, and most importantly, the look on Dean's face while Billy is hugging him. It was hilariously *AWESOME*.
-Pauses to snicker more-
This dream actually put me in a good enough mood that once I was semi-coherent, I felt ambitious enough to start on one of my two planned projects for today: cleaning my desk. Because one of the things everyone always beats into your head about being a writer is that a messy workspace is not inspirational.
So I cleaned off my desk. Got rid of trash, organized, moved things that didn't need to be there. I uncovered the two beautiful cards I bought at the renaissance festival in April and carefully put them up on the wall above my desk. Then I decided it needed more, and went to add the two gorgeous stained-glass stars I got there, too. One is a five-pointed star with points in white, yellow, blue, red, and green - the different elements, while the other is an eight-pointed star in multiple shades of green on a green ribbon. I adjusted my framed letter from rosabelle and the postcards from challon86 and purplestripe66 so that I could see them better. Then I went looking for a DVD I'd been meaning to dig out and came across a container with a bunch of things I've been collecting over the years for inspiration: various stones, some tiny dragon figurines, a ring from my grandmother. It was like treasure hunting. ♥ So I set the ones I felt most attached to up around my desk to make it look all pretty.
It looks incredibly awesome. ♥ -Is proud of self-
Of course, shortly after eating breakfast/lunch, I found myself getting sleepy. (I do that a lot lately; I blame being sick. >.<) So, I took a nap.
This dream wasn't so happy. I dreamed I was trying to get away from my family, to the point that I was actually running out of doors to avoid them and ducking through trees trying to get away. I never actually saw any of the people I was running from, but I recognized the place I eventually ran to as the canal behind the house I grew up in. At that point I was clutching a notebook and a pen, almost in tears, because I could hear the dogs running happily to catch up with me because they didn't understand I wanted to be left alone, and all I wanted was for everyone to just GO AWAY AND LET ME WRITE. To the point that I was literally on the verge of sobbing in frustration, because no one seemed to understand.
Of course, what I realized when I woke up about an hour later was that I hadn't actually taken the time to *tell* anyone in my dream that I wanted to be alone. I just expected them to know somehow. I think I had mentioned that I was planning to write - it was for something like Camp NaNoWriMo, I know that much - and I thought that was enough for them to understand I wanted space. But no one did, and I was hurt and angry and upset that they didn't just let me be so I could have my time alone to do what I wanted to do.
The fascinating part is that after I woke up from this dream, feeling all upset and frustrated, I happened to pick up If the Buddha Got Stuck. I randomly opened it, like I sometimes do, to see what quote jumped out at me.
The section I found myself at was one I haven't actually read yet. It's called 'Take on the Saboteurs'.
I was actually kind of nervous when I saw that. I wasn't really sure what the author would mean by Saboteurs, because there's a lot of ways it could be taken. Then I saw the two opening quotes, and most importantly, the first sentence.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We have met the enemy and it is us.
- Pogo
If you want your life to be different, you have to do something different.
It seems like a simple statement, but staring at it just ... opened my eyes. I'm not sure if it's because I'd just been thinking about the same thing yesterday, when I was thinking about Facebook and 'dirty laundry', or if it just happened to be the moment. It was just that sudden realization that I'm not going to fix anything that's wrong in my life - like wanting the space from the people I love and who love me to write, but feeling too trapped by their desire for my attention to say so - if I don't do something about it.
The rest of the following section is about working through your excuses and convincing yourself to understand why you're *really* making this excuse. There's even a section called 'Seventeen Strategies for Staying on Track' that struck me as being very appropriate for NaNo/Camp NaNoWriMo.
1. Do not demand perfection.
2. Have realistic expectations, be flexible, and start with small goals.
3. Develop strategies to make life easier.
4. Start with whatever is easiest.
5. Get help from a friend or be near other people.
6. Change the setting.
7. Hire someone.
8. Give yourself rewards. (This one makes me giggle, because it mentions that award stickers for your accomplishments are a good thing.)
9. Readjust your goals.
10. Do something for a given time period every day.
11. Stay focused on the big picture. (This one isn't what it sounds like. To quote: The big picture is your life - your happiness, health, and well-being and the mysterious nature of life.)
12. Make appointments on your calendar. (As in schedule yourself times for when you're going to exercise, write ... basically schedule time for *yourself*, to do what you want to accomplish.)
13. Hang out with your resistance.
14. Give yourself a whack (not physical).
15. Take one extra step.
16. Do it anyhow - anxiety and all.
17. Lighten up.
This one is really just a post for me, since it's kind of hard to understand if you haven't read the whole section. But I invite anyone who's curious to take a look and see it helps you.
But the other important phrasing I came across in the book that really hit me was this:
When you take on an activity or project, you can give it your full attention and see what happens. It might be fun, easy, difficult, or unpleasant, and it will work out or it won't - it really doesn't matter. The task is to let ourselves become fully immersed in the moment.
So, these are my new goals for myself:
- Clean desk Done! ★
- Tell friends and family that I am going to be focusing on writing for the next couple of months. Done, but I'm not sure the point quite got across. >.O ★
- SLOWLY start to work on exercising. Be careful to STOP WHEN IT HURTS.
- Write every day.
- Do another Walgreens run for caffeine and ice cream.
- Flesh out my side characters more. If they have a speaking part, they need more personality.
- Limit phone conversations so that I'll actually have the time *to* write.
- Deal with doctor stuff, no matter how much I don't want to.
- Limit the amount of time I spend browsing DeviantArt. It's not inspiring me if it's not actually leading into more writing.
- Re-read my notes. If I can't remember it, I'm clearly not going to be able to write it.
- WRITE. It doesn't matter how much. It doesn't matter when. It just matters that I'm doing it.
Last night I dreamed about this fifteen/sixteen year-old girl named Debbie, which was short for Debra. She lived with a woman who was like Ellen in looks and temperament, but I don't think it was actually supposed to be Ellen. But basically, Debbie was really a Winchester, and the woman - who was *not* her mother, but I'm not clear on who/where her mother was - was watching her for her father, John Winchester. Somehow Debbie found out that she had two older brothers, and decided to go track them down. I've forgotten now exactly how she found them, but basically she finally did and somehow ended up traveling around with them. At some point they did actually learn that she was their sister, and they accepted it and her, although things were kind of awkward at first.
Where the dream got interesting was at Sam's wedding. He was getting married to a girl named Sarah (I think she was supposed to be the same Sarah from season one, but she didn't look like her other than being brunette.), and for some reason Debbie had decided that this meant her brothers were going to split up and/or not let her travel with them anymore, and she was going to have to go back to the orphanage. (I have no idea where this thought came from, 'cause she wasn't actually living in an orphanage.) This pissed her off. So she attends the wedding, remaining all quiet and pissed off while Sam and Sarah are enjoying wedded bliss and Dean is beaming in pride for his little brother. When the wedding reception came around, everyone's got their champagne glasses, and Dean makes his toast as best man. What no one noticed right away is that Debbie was secretly pouring more alcohol into Dean's glass. After like, two glasses, Dean has this huge cheesy grin on his face because he's SO incredibly drunk, and he says 'Wow, this is some damn good wine.' Sam and Sarah are trying not to laugh at him, when they finally notice what Debbie is doing. Sam is desperately trying to keep a straight face in front of Dean while trying (and failing) to scold Debbie at the same time, while Sarah is just shaking her head and trying not to smile because Debbie is clearly not sorry for what she's doing and Sam is trying to pretend he doesn't really think it's hilarious - which he clearly does.
Somehow, this turned into Debbie getting arrested. She was being arrested for something to do with copy write infringement, something about a book that was sort of a memoire from Dean and Sam, and that Sarah had illustrated? But she was getting arrested because she had been trying to get it published, and now she was going to be executed for this. (I seriously don't even know.) Sam gets all freaked out, and he and Sarah end up going with Debbie to the police station, which means the three of them are squished into the back of the cop car together. Sam is trying to get Debbie to tell him what's going on and what was up with the whole getting Dean drunk thing, and ends up all confused when he finds out why she's being arrested, because there wasn't any copy write on this memoire book they'd been making. Which is when Sarah confesses that *she's* the one who put a copy write on it, because she thought it was a good idea, and now she feels all horrible because this wasn't supposed to happen. This turns into Sam finally getting Debbie to confess about what she's been so upset about, and that she thought they were going to split up and abandon her. There was this absolutely *adorable* moment of Sam, still all squished into the back of the cop car because he's way too tall to be back there, picking up Debbie and putting her in his lap (despite the fact that she's a teenager and not exactly all that tiny herself) so he can give her a big hug and assure her that he and Dean are *never* going to abandon her, and that him getting married doesn't mean they're going to get rid of her. And Sarah was agreeing that it wasn't going to change what the three of them had been doing. It was a very sweet moment all around. ♥
They end up at the police station and everybody gets out of the cop car to see Dean, who's all upset about what's going on and then gets all angry/hurt/worried when Sam explains what Debbie had been thinking, and there's more sibling cuteness while Dean assures her in his 'What are you, stupid?' way that he's not getting rid of her, either. ♥
Then John shows up. He'd heard about Debbie getting arrested and was coming to fix things (how I have *no* idea). Along with him was this *other* Winchester kid Dean and Sam had never known about - apparently in this dream John was spawning all over the place - only this time, it was their *oldest* brother, who was actually even older than Dean. Even better, it was actually Billy Cranston from MMPR. (Probably around season two, because he was wearing the wire-frame glasses instead of the giant dorky ones.) Sam, being Sam, is totally cool with this new brother/yet another random sibling from nowhere, and he and Billy exchanged a big hug and were chatting away with Sam translating Billy-speak while Dean and Debbie are staring at them both blankly. Then Billy smiles brightly at Dean and greets him as 'little brother', which clearly weirds Dean out seeing as he's always been the oldest. He sort of awkwardly greeted him back, and then Billy kind of glomp/hugged him, which was hilarious because Dean went all stiff and awkward with his arms trapped at his sides while Billy's hugging him and this totally freaked out 'WTF do I do now?' look on his face.
At which point I woke up laughing.
Seriously, I was actually grinning when I finally managed to open my eyes. My first thought was that it was like watching a bad fanfic, because there were random OCs and crossovers everywhere, and siblings popping out of nowhere without explanation. And no one thought any of this was weird. I can still picture the huge cheesy smile from DrunkDean, and Sam all squashed into the cop car and trying to hug his sister, and most importantly, the look on Dean's face while Billy is hugging him. It was hilariously *AWESOME*.
-Pauses to snicker more-
This dream actually put me in a good enough mood that once I was semi-coherent, I felt ambitious enough to start on one of my two planned projects for today: cleaning my desk. Because one of the things everyone always beats into your head about being a writer is that a messy workspace is not inspirational.
So I cleaned off my desk. Got rid of trash, organized, moved things that didn't need to be there. I uncovered the two beautiful cards I bought at the renaissance festival in April and carefully put them up on the wall above my desk. Then I decided it needed more, and went to add the two gorgeous stained-glass stars I got there, too. One is a five-pointed star with points in white, yellow, blue, red, and green - the different elements, while the other is an eight-pointed star in multiple shades of green on a green ribbon. I adjusted my framed letter from rosabelle and the postcards from challon86 and purplestripe66 so that I could see them better. Then I went looking for a DVD I'd been meaning to dig out and came across a container with a bunch of things I've been collecting over the years for inspiration: various stones, some tiny dragon figurines, a ring from my grandmother. It was like treasure hunting. ♥ So I set the ones I felt most attached to up around my desk to make it look all pretty.
It looks incredibly awesome. ♥ -Is proud of self-
Of course, shortly after eating breakfast/lunch, I found myself getting sleepy. (I do that a lot lately; I blame being sick. >.<) So, I took a nap.
This dream wasn't so happy. I dreamed I was trying to get away from my family, to the point that I was actually running out of doors to avoid them and ducking through trees trying to get away. I never actually saw any of the people I was running from, but I recognized the place I eventually ran to as the canal behind the house I grew up in. At that point I was clutching a notebook and a pen, almost in tears, because I could hear the dogs running happily to catch up with me because they didn't understand I wanted to be left alone, and all I wanted was for everyone to just GO AWAY AND LET ME WRITE. To the point that I was literally on the verge of sobbing in frustration, because no one seemed to understand.
Of course, what I realized when I woke up about an hour later was that I hadn't actually taken the time to *tell* anyone in my dream that I wanted to be alone. I just expected them to know somehow. I think I had mentioned that I was planning to write - it was for something like Camp NaNoWriMo, I know that much - and I thought that was enough for them to understand I wanted space. But no one did, and I was hurt and angry and upset that they didn't just let me be so I could have my time alone to do what I wanted to do.
The fascinating part is that after I woke up from this dream, feeling all upset and frustrated, I happened to pick up If the Buddha Got Stuck. I randomly opened it, like I sometimes do, to see what quote jumped out at me.
The section I found myself at was one I haven't actually read yet. It's called 'Take on the Saboteurs'.
I was actually kind of nervous when I saw that. I wasn't really sure what the author would mean by Saboteurs, because there's a lot of ways it could be taken. Then I saw the two opening quotes, and most importantly, the first sentence.
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
We have met the enemy and it is us.
- Pogo
If you want your life to be different, you have to do something different.
It seems like a simple statement, but staring at it just ... opened my eyes. I'm not sure if it's because I'd just been thinking about the same thing yesterday, when I was thinking about Facebook and 'dirty laundry', or if it just happened to be the moment. It was just that sudden realization that I'm not going to fix anything that's wrong in my life - like wanting the space from the people I love and who love me to write, but feeling too trapped by their desire for my attention to say so - if I don't do something about it.
The rest of the following section is about working through your excuses and convincing yourself to understand why you're *really* making this excuse. There's even a section called 'Seventeen Strategies for Staying on Track' that struck me as being very appropriate for NaNo/Camp NaNoWriMo.
1. Do not demand perfection.
2. Have realistic expectations, be flexible, and start with small goals.
3. Develop strategies to make life easier.
4. Start with whatever is easiest.
5. Get help from a friend or be near other people.
6. Change the setting.
7. Hire someone.
8. Give yourself rewards. (This one makes me giggle, because it mentions that award stickers for your accomplishments are a good thing.)
9. Readjust your goals.
10. Do something for a given time period every day.
11. Stay focused on the big picture. (This one isn't what it sounds like. To quote: The big picture is your life - your happiness, health, and well-being and the mysterious nature of life.)
12. Make appointments on your calendar. (As in schedule yourself times for when you're going to exercise, write ... basically schedule time for *yourself*, to do what you want to accomplish.)
13. Hang out with your resistance.
14. Give yourself a whack (not physical).
15. Take one extra step.
16. Do it anyhow - anxiety and all.
17. Lighten up.
This one is really just a post for me, since it's kind of hard to understand if you haven't read the whole section. But I invite anyone who's curious to take a look and see it helps you.
But the other important phrasing I came across in the book that really hit me was this:
When you take on an activity or project, you can give it your full attention and see what happens. It might be fun, easy, difficult, or unpleasant, and it will work out or it won't - it really doesn't matter. The task is to let ourselves become fully immersed in the moment.
So, these are my new goals for myself:
- Clean desk Done! ★
- Tell friends and family that I am going to be focusing on writing for the next couple of months. Done, but I'm not sure the point quite got across. >.O ★
- SLOWLY start to work on exercising. Be careful to STOP WHEN IT HURTS.
- Write every day.
- Do another Walgreens run for caffeine and ice cream.
- Flesh out my side characters more. If they have a speaking part, they need more personality.
- Limit phone conversations so that I'll actually have the time *to* write.
- Deal with doctor stuff, no matter how much I don't want to.
- Limit the amount of time I spend browsing DeviantArt. It's not inspiring me if it's not actually leading into more writing.
- Re-read my notes. If I can't remember it, I'm clearly not going to be able to write it.
- WRITE. It doesn't matter how much. It doesn't matter when. It just matters that I'm doing it.