Intermission: Dream #2 support or fatigue of the creative process

Why does "he" do this?  It rattles me so.  It really does.  I end up tired and even exhausted from... a trip FROM the brain, trip from the brain. 

It seems like your brain can be your own worst enemy sometimes.  It insists on dawging you in your sleep with things that never happened that you only worry could have happened or which happened in a lesser version but are blown out of proportion by the brain.  I don't get it.  Why would your best friend want to hurt you so?

My dreams do not follow to the best of my knowledge any ideas about the purpose of dreams.  Sigmund Freud said dreams had to do with wish fulfillment.  I cant think of one dream that I have had in the past.... say, fifteen years that has been concerned with wish fulfillment, oh maybe except that one about climbing to the moon.  Otherwise they mostly have to do with scaring the wits out of me in one way or another whether it deals with someone being on the other side of that door trying to get in and they are not my friend or I am at the pool swimming except there is no water in the pool and I am swimming on the pool tile.  Its not something I ever really wanted to do or to happen to me.  But strangely it happens to me quite often in my dreams, or else the water turns to snow.

Nor can I fathom any latent meaning in any of these dreams that represent wish fulfillment.  Well, of course except for the obvious that I am dreaming of swimming which represents the fact that I really want to wake up and relieve myself at the toilet.  I am not a psychologist or even therapist, so I could not say this from intellectual study, but the only wish fulfillment I see is that I wish I would stop vivid dreaming.

And others say dreaming is a way of either memory consolidation or working through problems from the day.  Uh, for me, ... no.   If anything my dreams just add to and exaggerate my problems.  For instance at this time in my small business I owe a lot of people money.  But what does my brain do?  It makes me dream of owing TWICE as many people TWICE as much money.  So much that I have lost track of the list and I am trying to cross the people off the list of people I owe, but the list seems to grow with each cross out I make.  Maybe that was the same night I had my dream of climbing to the moon?  No, in fact it was just climbing to another tier of people I owed money to.  There were three levels of people I owed and I was climbing up and down.

And memory consolidation?  Why does the brain find it so important to store the memory of a picture of a poster I saw for a split second while walking to work of a clown in a circus?  I couldn't even remember what the poster was about, but for some reason my brain felt it so important that it had to incorporate that poster into my dreams and even make it a vital element of the dream.  That's called memory consolidation?  I call it waste of brain cells.  Sheesh, I might as well have drunk a beer and killed those brain cells if all they were going to do was store the image of a poster of a clown for absolutely no good reason.  And let me tell you, I never used any information from that poster or picture, but I still have the picture stored in my brain. Something like this picture, except in black and white.     

Frustrated after reading reams of studies on dreams and not finding one plausible explanation for my dreams and more so my ability to remember them in detail,  I therefore made up my own.  In fact my brain is pushing me to get to action and write and be creative.  I notice that sometimes my vivid dreaming becomes more intense during a fallow period of little or no writing.  So my brain is pushing me to get started again.

 "And oh by the way, here are some ideas  that you should WRITE ABOUT.  Get the hint dude?  Get creative, get writing.  You can write about swimming in a pool without water."

 "No no brain, you always give me that one."

"Well then  how about not having gone to a class all semester and the exam is tomorrow and you have no idea what the course is about.  Oh and the exam will be taken on the 19th floor of the building and there is no elevator so you have to walk up and in fact on the 19th floor lives... Satan Satan Satan.  Bahahahahahahah."

"Yeah brain, that is an interesting twist on the usual idea you send me about failing a class, but, you know what brain?  I think its better if I just write the story and you... you let me sleep please.  I have some ideas in my head for some stories which I think are a bit more... um... creative than yours, although don't get me wrong brain, I appreciate your sending me the pictures and ideas, but could you just let me work on them now and you let me sleep?  Let me get some peaceful sleep?  You haven't sent me a good idea since that dream about living right next to that electric power company which spewed out such soot that it shut the town down for hours during the day.  That was a good one, rather disturbing, as are most of your ideas, but I did use that one.  But since then.... nothing really good."

"No sirree Bob, I have to push you and send you more ideas and basically kick your arse or you just wont get to it.  So sorry, but more vivid dreams coming up for you.  You should write them down.  Why haven't you been writing them down again?"

"Oh bugger it."

Trip from the Brain, A-gain.   

My Father wrote very deep, intellectual books, the last one he wrote was about Hegel.  He used to take three hour walks along the Bruce Trail in Niagara Falls and St. Catherine's, Canada or the Mission Peninsula in Michigan to work on his ideas and consolidate and write and rewrite things in his head.  He was a very smart man.  Me, I just go to sleep.

 

     

 Above the first picture is the Mission Peninsula down the center between the bodies of water.  This lower picture is on the Mission Peninsula I am sure my Father saw it many times.  

Back to School again. Ugh, someone drag me out of bed please.

School started up on September 1st here.  I guess it had to come.  All things must pass said George Harrison.

I always hear about "what are we going to do with the kids in the summer this year?" as if it is a monumental crisis.  I have no problems with it.  I take my vacation and bring the girls with me.  Then when I am back, my wife sort of goes on vacation and I work. On vacation we go to bed a bit later because the sun goes to bed later.  We get up later because we are allowed to and do pretty much what we please according to our circadian rhythm.

For a while my girls were sleeping for 12 hours a night in the summer.  Fine by me.  If that is what they needed.  Great.


Along comes the spider and sat down beside her, I mean along comes the school year AGAIN and messes up everyone`s schedule and circadian rhythm.
 In the summer I was going to bed between Midnight and 1 am and getting up between 8 and 9 am.  I think that was very reasonable.


 Now, I still go to bed between 11.30 and 12.30 but I have to get up at 6.30 am!! Arg.  Not to mention that I usually have dreams about impending failure in Biology or Math class because I haven't gone to class all semester and I have the final exam tomorrow and I have read absolutely none of the reading.... grrrr.  And then my younger daughter calls me at 3am (she knows it is senseless to call her Mother because Mother will not hear her because she sleeps like she is in a coma) and I have to lull her back to sleep, but I don't fall back to sleep for another hour.  I am confronted with terrible sleep deprivation which makes me tired much of the day.  And ... what was the title of this post?  What was I talking about...?

Oh yeah, back to school.

I was originally looking for an article I heard about which talked about the busiest time of day for parents and children being in the morning before school and evening before bed, but instead I came across this article.  Now I know it isn't a reputable newspaper, or it has those sideline articles about Lindsey Lohann back in jail or the Kardashians new butt slimming diet (which obviously hasn't worked for them), all the same I had to take notice.

OK, you all read the article.   

But wait a sec, I am not a teenager?  And my girls are not teenagers yet either.   They say these problems commonly occur among teenagers.  The other article about circadian rhythm also mentions DSPS affecting teenagers and young adults, but usually going away by mid twenties or adult hood. (Ha, you think mid twenties is "adulthood"? Phh, where do you come from?) So why should I be interested?  I am in fact about middle age, at least it says so on my drivers license.  Well because for the likes of me, I can not go to bed before 11pm.  The last time I did that was when I got food poisoning in August 2014 and I was wasted from throwing up all day that I went straight to bed when I got home from work at 8pm.

Likewise, getting up at 6.30 is akin to, well, having food poisoning and having no strength in your body because you have literally thrown it all up.  You might as well drag me out of the bed across the floor to get me up.  It shouldn't be too hard.  We only sleep on a mattress on the floor so I wont clonk my head falling out of bed.  Suffice to say, I do get up, but it is like getting up after surgery.  In fact, making Dad wake up so early in the morning is plain cruelty (yes say it, cruelty to animals). 

Here is the last article, a bit more in depth and complicated, but quite interesting, about circadian sleep disorders.  It is called Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome DSPS.

All this leads me to hypothesize that in fact I have the brain of a teenager. In deed I hope I have reached puberty.  But that could be debated.   

I probably have a light case of DSPS.  Thus I would like to make an individual plea to my daughter`s school: Look school system, all I am asking for is we get started at 9am instead of 8am and I can sleep till 7.30am.  That would suit me fine.  I wouldn't go to bed later, I would still get to bed at 11.30 pm or so.  Maybe I would even donate a fine goat to the school in appreciation... oh sorry wrong millennium and country.

And in fact my wishes were partly granted last year and continuing this year, for on Tuesdays and Thursdays my daughter can be in school at 9am because her first class is split in two.   Half the group takes the class at 8am and the other half in the afternoon (the other kids can go home sooner those days).

This has been wonderful.  You don't know how much I look forward to Monday nights and Wednesday nights.  If we get up early enough on Tuesdays and Thursdays my wife makes pancakes and we have a big breakfast and we have a nice morning.  Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are usually just grab a cup of tea and just make it out the door in time to not take the car and a brisk walk to school to be on time.  (I hate it when we are so late that we have to give in to taking the car to get us there on time.) 

Let it be known I feel embarrassed at my silly First World complaint and request when so many others are losing their homes and have to walk across Europe to find a place of safety.  I do think about these things, but all the same, I would like to air my request for a later school day start.  Granted it is very selfish as only 1 in 1000 people are afflicted with DSPS and even less have it past their twenties.  And I realize others have to be at work at 9am and they bring their kids to school before work, all the same, I thought it was important for it to be known that often other people do not fit into the exact same mould as the rest of society and even not through their doing, but through their  DNA. We should at least acknowledge that not everyone is the same even if they want to fit in with society "properly".  In other words, give those non morning people a bit of leeway and a little break.  Dont scoff at them and say nastily, "So and so is so lazy, he is always late to work."  Instead say, "So and so must have DSPS, he is always late to work.  Poor guy.  We should fire him."  Uh, except for that last bit. 

I will definitely be watching my daughters when they become teenagers to see if they show signs of DSPS.  If you have teenagers, maybe you should too.  Then again, they might just be on drugs, in which case you dont have anything to worry about with DSPS. Uh.... 

But for the time being, I ll take it and get up at 6.30 am and try to go to bed earlier and "fit in", because I love my daughters and love means that you often do things that you don't want to do.

Oh well, ten more months till Summer vacation.

I ll get some pictures in this post to brighten it up.  I just wanted to publish it on the weekend while weekend was still here.   Thanks for reading.  Make a comment, even call me names if you want. 

Summertime 2015 pt 2 : summary

OK, stop right here.  I wont be offended if you wont read this post.  You know why you wont read it? Because there will be absolutely no tension or bad things happening in this post.  It will be just sunshiny, wonderful, everything is "AOK", good news.  And you know what?  Nobody likes to read that!

You ever notice the tone of voice of the news presenters on the nightly news and the adjectives they use?   You would think the world is going to end tomorrow.  I even hear it on the BBC.  They even try to color the news so it sounds bad.  You know what?  I don't think it is the journalists fault.  I think people like this.  People want to hear bad news about impending doom.  The only people who like no risk and want calm are big financier investors and we all know how boring they are.

So, no need to read this post.  Because I have no bad news for you.

What was I going to tell you?

Oh yeah.  Summer was great.  I had a fantastic time with my girls all of July at my Mother`s cottage.

(Credit:  Picture by Ann Post)

(Credit: Picture by Ann Post)

Yep, that is my older girl driving the boat.  No she didn't crash it, though I thought she might.  Wish i had some pictures of them swimming, but I used those last year.

In three words, everything was wonderful.  It was especially wonderful when my older girl learned how to swim under water without breathing in water, albeit holding her nose.  We will work on that.

The weather was great most every day.  While everyone else in the US and Europe was in a heat wave , we had cooler weather with wind from the lake and in the woods.  We went swimming practically everyday.  I let them watch their favorite cartoon shows, "Arthur", "Wildkratts", "Dinosaur Train" and they liked watching Sesame Street which makes me happy because I remember watching it when I was their age.

We went to the bigger beach on the bay a couple times, pictured above, Bryant Park.  The second time we had big waves which were great fun.  I let them eat potato chips and drink root beer (one can of bio organic root beer shared between them) once a day.  We had pizza a couple times, but more often wonderful Michigan corn on the cob which they really love.  They played board games with their Grandma and got to know Grandma better and vice versa.  Neighbors took them for a boat ride on the lake pictured above.  They went to bed a bit later because the sun went to bed later there too.  I read to them every night... I could go on, and on, but I think you get the point.

In other words, it was a perfectly, wonderful vacation.  Every day of it.  There was no tension or riveting bad news (except when there was a severe thunderstorm which might have been a small hurricane which knocked out the power for two days,  Maybe I should write that tale of that "horrid" experience). There was no doom and gloom.  In other words, by journalists standards it was probably boring to tears.  But isn't that what life is like?  I mean the really, awful newsworthy plot twists just happen like a blip and are gone.  Most of life is just "normal" and "boring" and routine, but that is where most of life takes place.

So, if you are looking for the nightly news,  "topping tonight's news a car crash, a fire ball explosion, a landslide, people beheaded, a scandal, corruption", OK, go ahead my friend, you can train to be James Bond 007.  But for the real meat and potatoes of life, all you have to do is wake up, get out of bed, drive a comb across your head, put on your clothes, hopefully eat your breakfast and brush your teeth and walk out the door, the same as you do every morning.  And THAT will be life.  And THAT will be wonderful.  

OK,  now the message for stay at home dads, or dads that want to spend more time with their kids:  Dudes,  I spent a month by myself with my young girls.  Yes, my Mother (their Grandma) put in  valuable assistance and support, but their Mother was not there.  If I can do it, you can too.  And I took them on a plane ride half way around the world to get there.  But...  don't wait for next summer, spend quantity and quality time with your kids this weekend, tomorrow, right now.  And then when next summer comes, plan the big kahuna vacation with them, just you and them.  You can do it. 

My kids love this show and it is good educational TV.