To Dream, Perchance to Do

I’ve been thinking about the difference between those that Do and those that Dream.

It started with Relic by Preston and Childs. Their characters who get too involved in outcomes end up dead. They become so involved in the dream of success that they become overconfident and make mistakes. Quite a moral to the story don’t you think?

Then I’ve been distracting my overactive brain with doses of Stargate SG-1. It was one of their ‘humorous’ episodes that got me. Dreamer geeks who want to be part of the team part II. The moral of that story is that you can be really smart and incredibly inept all at the same time. There was also an element of stick-to-it-ness. No matter how long it takes you keep going until you have a solution.   

The last few days I’ve been fighting with my subconscious and with the ongoing insomnia. I’ve had a hard time sticking to my schedule and finding the Doer in myself.

I’ve succumbed to the Dreamer.

The Dreamer thinks that it is okay to sit and watch TV or read for hours. The Dreamer loves to slip into a fantasy and stay there all day. If you’ve ever wondered where writers get their ideas here it is. I can spin out fantasies all day and my subconscious does it all night. It is practice for creating new worlds on paper.

But as long as I am the Dreamer nothing gets written. The Dreamer doesn’t need to achieve because the dream is the achievement.

I need to balance that out with the Doer.

The Doer despises the Dreamer in me. Finds it a weakness and doesn’t understand why it can’t take control and simply Do. It despises others when it finds they succumb to the Dreamer within themselves. The Doer doesn’t want to be associated with people who don’t achieve.  

I can’t become one or the other I need the balance.  

Balance is difficult.

I need the Doer to achieve and the Dreamer to create. I keep trying different ways to motivate myself – to get the Doer to whip the Dreamer into shape. Things work, but never for very long. No one said this would be easy but I wasn’t expecting this strange duality.

I wasn’t expecting the last few days.

Maybe I should have been. In the early work of Jung on personality types (what eventually became the Myers-Briggs test) he talks about the Intuitive personality as being very close to the subconscious. Intuitive is N in Myers-Brigs and is one side of the spectrum that defines how we process information. Sensing – on the other end – is an A, B, C approach to information. Intuitive is more like A, 13, Epsilon – a web of data points that the Intuitive somehow pulls into a cohesive whole. In a negative sense they often seem scattered. Seen in a positive light they have the ability to draw lines between data that others don’t see.

I’ve always felt that the Intuitive aspect of my personality helped me although sometimes I wish for a more organized brain. I can see patterns but I don’t always know what to do with them. Sometimes I’m so busy seeing into things that I don’t pay attention to the obvious, otherwise known as being oblivious. I’m good at that.  

The more I’ve connected with the Dreamer within myself the more the Doer has lost ground. The more I realize I need both of them.

Do you think I can ask them to play nice together?

Today is the first day I haven’t felt a little lost to reality. Like a therapist my subconscious has made me look at my life and my choices in new ways. Was it worth the three days I lost to know these things?

I’m not sure. But here I am, and there is work to be done, worlds to create, and words to write. I need my Doer to help me stick to things and to keep my mind in the present and not start weaving possible futures. It’s hard and I’ve learned things about myself that I don’t particularly like.

I’ve always believed that we can choose who we become so I’ll take this information and run with it and see if I can stop despising myself. Knowing has always been the first step to change.  

I know… an odd post for the day. But it has been an odd week.

~ Tess

Miles to go…

I’m having trouble sleeping.

I have no idea how long this has been going on. Every night I wake up. If I’m lucky it is once, if not then it is constant.

The first clue that this has become a problem is my cat, Minerva. She usually sleeps on me or against me. Since the beginning of the year she has moved to the bottom of the bed. She is a very persistent personality so I’m sure it’s taken her quite awhile to change her habits.

How long?

Yesterday my lack of sleep, the restlessness and the strange dreams combined to make it a very weird day. I should have stayed home so as not to inflict myself on others but I didn’t have a choice so I went out and probably negatively impacted a lot of people. Thank goodness for my girl friends. They took me out for drinks. It helped. I came home took a melatonin and thought things would be better.

Last night was worse.

Last night it felt like I didn’t sleep at all. I was restless and my brain kept going a million miles an hour. It used to be that when I was like this it was over something at work – but now it is all stories, dreams, fantasies, and delusions. My mind is filled with the strangest thoughts and at night they try to escape from me. No one would want to live in the worlds that I experience when I dream yet they are not nightmares.

I promised myself that if I felt that incredible restlessness I would get up and write. But that didn’t happen. It was a low level night. A constant buzz of dreamscapes but I always felt like I had a chance of falling asleep, but then I would wake up.

The thing is, years ago when I had horrible insomnia I did a bunch of research and changed a lot of my habits. Bed is for bed, it is quiet, cool, and I only sleep there. I used to read in bed for hours on end but I read that can be counterproductive for an insomniac. I stopped drinking caffeine late in the day, don’t drink right before bed, and created a ritual to help my body move from waking to sleeping.

But it’s been years since I had that kind of insomnia….funny I didn’t notice this happening besides this is different.

As long as I don’t have another day like yesterday I think I’ll be fine – but I wonder what is causing this. I don’t remember ever dreaming like this, even as a child. Sometimes there are hundreds of images and stories in a night that I flip through none of them a repeat.

I’m not sure what to do because deep down I wonder if this is a byproduct of releasing my imagination and I am afraid of what might happen if I try and squelch it.

The logical part of me is telling me that I need good sleep!  

I usually go for the logic – so melatonin, no alcohol, and yoga for relaxation before bed. I’m feeling really ambitious I’ll add in some meditation or breathing exercises.

And if that doesn’t work…. *shrug* I’ll just write about it.

~ Tess