Tuesday, September 25, 2012

I'm Building An Island In My Mind

Last night as I lay in bed, sleep not coming for the second or third night in a row, I decided to stretch my imagination and begin to build an ideal landscape of a small island in my mind. I started with it's geographical coordinates, somewhere in the central Pacific Ocean, South of the Equator. Then I laid out it's shape and topography, 5 points like a star, with one high plateau, a mountain peak and a harbor. I was soon asleep.

I've also begun doing exercises to lucid dream. I don't think I believed that lucid dreaming was really possible - controlling yourself in your dreams, until I did it for the first time a few weeks ago. In my dream I bounded down the street as if the Earth had the gravity of the moon, and I ate onion rings. I felt great when I woke up.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Sensory Overload

It's hard to believe that I'm almost thirty and still learning the basic ways that my brain works. For example, I thought that I was an extrovert most of my life. It was only in the last two years that I realized that not only am I introverted, but I'm on the more extreme side of the scale. Today, I'm sitting in my apartment, in the dark,  catching up on YouTube videos, listening to sermons and now writing this blog post. It's almost 5pm, I haven't seen a soul and I may go the rest of the day without leaving the house. Even the few phone calls I had today felt like a chore. The reason for this agoraphobic day is that last night, I went out to a speakeasy Cuban club and got sensory overloaded. And I had a good time! But to turn on that social side of myself, in such a focused way, I feel like my batteries have been emptied and now I have to recharge today. I'm still learning what this means for myself and how to best act with this knowledge. I don't wish that I was an extrovert. I like these alone days. I like socializing too. It's just a balance.

(Written very stream-of-conscious, just to get the fingers moving.)