100 Business Days Out: Day 9 - Dreaming

A long time ago, in one of the magazines like Men’s Life, Esquire, Details, etc., I remember an author who had been laid-off and went traveling and he wrote about 50 days away with his wife and what it was like. I kept that article for a long time because one of the things he said started to happen to him after a few weeks was that he began dreaming again. I was fascinated and I wondered first, why we don’t dream as much when we are stressed and if one’s dreaming pattern would change if under less stress…or maybe when away from the workplace. I was skeptical. But, today, I am less skeptical than before. Because, what is happening to me is that I am starting to dream again. I have just begun to notice that I found myself remembering that I spent the night dreaming and on multiple topics. I’ve always been one who can go to sleep quickly (much to Patti’s chagrin) but I never could tell you that I dreamed (which, I have since learned that everyone does, but no everyone can remember) or if I did, I certainly couldn’t remember. Instead, I felt that my nights were full of working out problems and that my brain was rehearsing tomorrow’s script for the hard meeting, or working out how to make a problem go away, or just trying to come up with the next creative idea. So, subconsciously, I think, like the rest of life and priorities, I wouldn’t let myself dream freely. That would be wasting time or brainwaves. So, I must have been suppressing the real/fun dreams. But now I can take that governor off and let my dreams come freely. And that is what it is starting to feel like. Oh by the way, I still have the 3AM wake-up call (more about that tomorrow) but it’s now a different wake-up reason. Happy dreaming!