Perchance

I don't know why, but I've had really epic dreams for the last couple of nights. Or maybe it's just that I've remembered them better than I usually do, by virtue of waking up half an hour or so before I need to get out of bed and thus having ample time to analyse my subconscious meanderings. But each of them came in three distinct interlinked sections, with a whole host of characters, strange locations and goings-on. This morning I even woke up with a catchy original tune running around my head, but I've forgotten it now, annoyingly enough. I do have another dream-composition from a few months ago that's going to be a hit single some day, or at least a popular jingle for a bacon advert (the lyrics involve getting out of bed and having a bacon sandwich, which was obviously something on my mind at the time).

A guy on an internet message board for idiots who want people to think they're clever (one of my favourites, naturally, although I don't post there much any more) is fond of saying that you only dream if you have unresolved thoughts in your mind when you go to sleep. So, he says, a practicioner of yoga (or whatever he does) doesn't need to dream and is therefore an altogether better person. Being too polite to say so to his face, I'll say here behind his back that this is the most ridiculously, colossally STUPID thing I have ever heard. Why on earth would you want to not have dreams? Letting your subconscious play around and entertain you is something that you should try to do as much as possible! In fact, what the world needs is a way to make people dream much more than they do at the moment. That would make the world a better place.

Last night's dream actually posed me a moral dilemma that I was ruminating about at work today. Going into detail would be long, complicated and incomprehensible, but the basic idea in this dream was that a friend of mine was unhappy, and I came up with a solution that basically involved taking her mind off things for an evening, rather than doing anything about the long-term cause. Indeed, when presented with an opportunity to ask for help from someone who might have been able to do more (but might have made things worse), I deliberately didn't. This, it seems to me, is typical of the way I always go about things. I do go out of my way to make other people happy, but only in the immediate kind of way you can do with a hug or a kind gesture. I generally avoid doing anything to help people deal with serious problems of their own. If someone's upset, my usual solution is to do something silly and keep everyone entertained, leaving someone else to do the comforting. Perhaps I should make more of an effort to do some good in the world. Or possibly I should stop overthinking everything and just carry on the way I am.

See what I mean about Christmas time? I'm getting all introspective and serious. It won't last. Anyway, if anybody was wondering how the new job's coming along, it's not too bad. I don't entirely know what I'm doing, but everyone else there is to a greater or lesser degree in the same situation, so it could be a lot worse. Still don't know if I'll stay there in the long term, but I'll cross that bridge when I either get fired or find out that I've been there for forty years and I'm retiring next week.