Dreams

Dreams are weird. Or maybe it's just me...  For some reason, when I get stressed out, my dreams become really vividly clear. Same thing happens when I take 10 minute power naps, but I'd been taught that dreams only occur in REM sleep. Maybe it's because I only do the 10-min power nap each hour during my near-all-nighters (read as tired and stressed the hell out), I can reach REM after than a normal person? *shrug

Anyway, I've been having consistently vivid dreams this past week, but the catch is: I don't know what I'm stressed about. Time for some hypno-therapy? haha, I have no clue what's going on. I remember reading that keeping a dream log is one of the first steps towards training oneself for lucid dreaming. Maybe that explains some of these...

Suicide has an exceedingly high opportunity cost
So the first one in this series took place in pre- or post-apocalyptic world (something had happened and we were all just surviving, but apparently, another event was looming). Me and my family (?) or friends (?) were surviving from the bridge of a battleship. We were getting overrun by random people trying to get in, so we were pushing them out of the windows they were trying to climb through with metal lab stools (think chemistry or anatomy lab stools).

Suddenly, amidst the chaos, there was an oddly dressed intruder standing among us (the aura / vibe I felt was something similar to the tone of the bad guys from animated series I watched a while back - really dark and foreboding).

She & I get into a big argument. Her position was something along the lines of: there's no hope; suicide is the only way to guarantee an end to suffering and entry into Heaven.  I reply that the second apocalyptic event is not a certainty and neither is the afterlife. If you kill yourself, the only certainty is: you're dead. Hearing this, she takes a pair of dissection scissors and cuts my hand, between my index and middle fingers.  I don't feel any pain and simply wake up.

Interpretation: I saw Seven Psychopaths like two or three weeks ago and one of the storylines involved a Quaker who was looking to avenge the murder of his daughter. The murderer found religion in prison and was eventually released. The Quaker would stalk him and then disappear in a blink of the eye. Eventually, the murderer is convinced that the only way to escape was to commit suicide, guaranteeing himself a spot in Hell. The last thing the murderer saw before he died was the Quaker man pulling out a straight razor and slitting his own throat. Dunno where the rest of the dream came from though.

Okay, so this was a rather dark dream. Suicide is never worth the opportunity cost of living out one's life. And no, I have never seriously considered taking my own life. Maybe it's time to watch happier / less-violent movies...

Right afterward, I went back to sleep and had another dream:

Amusement Park Raid

I'm at some kind of amusement park ride with a queue to go fight monsters in a jungle environment. It is my second time getting into the queue and I get paired up once again with an acquaintance whom I met for the first time some 6-7 years ago. More recently, we'd been talking a bit on Facebook every few months - she was the organizer for the week-long simulation peace conference I participated in back in the day at the United States Institute of Peace (we solved Uganda & child soldiers on paper). But anyway, along the left side of the queue tunnel, there are piles upon piles of weapons. They ranged from longswords, katanas, and broadswords to nerf-guns, airsoft guns, and hunting bows. For this instance, I chose a black claymore (think William Wallace and Braveheart).

I swing it around a few times but the next time I turned around, I was holding a black office chair! WTF. I scramble out of line to go get something else, but found that nothing was worthy of my time / was functional. By this time, an unprecedented crowd had formed up in the tunnel and I was still trying to arm myself. Finally, the "raid" or whatever started and the gates opened up. From being picky, I ended up with a dinky wooden short-sword. I hop some fences to cut the line and get back to my partner. Unfortunately, my alarm goes off and I wake up before I got to kill any monsters. Damn.

Interpretation: I used to be a gamer and should learn to be less particular? *shrug

Loyalty

Recently, I received an email from the Orthopaedic Surgery Society regarding a research project that is almost finished, but needs a med student to do some number crunching for the paper. It was advertised as a timely and awesome opportunity for someone trying to add to their CV, since you should be able to get a publication out in a few months (not sure what your authorship status would be though). However, I'm already involved with a project in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery dealing with diabetic bone. Though this is a topic that I'm interested in, of course part of me is wondering about the workload involved for the number crunching project. A publication AND a conference presentation all within 4 months of one another? Yes, please. Of course, it's totally not feasible since taking on the second project would detract from my work on both.

In this dream, I figure since the PI I'm working with is also from the Ortho Dept, he'd be able to get me the other gig / give me his blessing. But for some reason, we're meeting inside the Astrodome (in this world, it's been converted to research labs). From here, we start talking about the physics behind the "railgun" (for those not familiar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun) and before I even bring up the other project, we start building a railgun and to test it, we shoot a ring with a few knives attached to it through a 3ft concrete wall. Uhhhh......yep.

Interpretation: Railguns are fun. Some of us got to play with a miniature one, one summer back in high school. Yay for physics!

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I've also dreamed about magical mahjong matches, like something from a Japanese anime. I'm not crazy, I swear. Have y'all had ridiculous dreams lately?