She's dreamin'

I'm not sure how it works for other people, but night time for me is an opportunity for my sub-conscious to run wild. It likes to use its entire toolkit of imagery, to release my deepest thoughts, feelings, and sometimes fears to the rest of my brain.

For months after visiting the Cayman Islands, I had a reoccurring dream of moving to a tropical island. All my friends would be there, waiting for me. Mostly the dreams were about me deciding where on the island I was going to live, and what kind of work I wanted to be doing. It was always sunny and the water was crystal clear. I'd wake with an overwhelming feeling of calm, and the obvious desire to immediately move to a white sanded beach.

But, just as quickly as they began, the dreams stopped a few months ago.

During the working week, I spend most of my dreaming time focused on clients and projects. This makes me feel incredibly dull. It's bad enough that I spend my working days concerned with action planning, surveys, analysis and project milestones, but it's horrifying to think that that's where my brain likes to spend its downtime.

I also worry that my sub-conscious has serious doubts about the depth of my intelligence, because a lot of the time, it prefers to make any messages it chooses to send me, as blatant as possible.

As my psychotherapist-in-training housemate said to me, last night's dream was one where no dream analysis book was required.

I was on holiday with a bunch of friends, staying at a series of Japanese-style hotels, with futons and tatami flooring. Every night we'd lay out the futons, and every night all of my friends would go to sleep in their respective pairings, except for me, who would always miss out on a futon, and would be left to lie on a pillow of folded clothing, at everyone else's feet.

I spend enough of my waking time battling with these sorts of insecurities, I don't want to wake up at 6am on a Sunday morning in a cold 'will be single forever' sweat. Bring back the tropical island dreams I say.