My dreams are invalid.

To be clear, by dreams, I mean the kind I have when I sleep. My hopes, wishes, and aspirations are all valid, as far as I can tell. We call those things dreams too, but again, they aren't the subject of this particular post. It's the stuff my subconscious does that's invalid.

I'm a different person in them, and almost always either weaker or just worse. For instance, the dream I just dreamt involved going back to High School at 28. In the dream, I never graduated, and I'd been technically enrolled in High School since 2000; but I was never going to class, and they moved me back a grade every few years. I was about to be sent back to middle school (junior high).

In the real world, I graduated. In the real world, it never mattered that I wasn't an excellent student. I get by as I always have, performing a bit better than people expect of me, but rarely so much better that anybody really takes notice. It's a path without much resistance, which I like, because resistance is troublesome.

So why am I dreaming that I'm stuck in High School, and more to the point, why am I dreaming that High School causes me so much trouble? I suppose there's some sort of poetic irony in there, because there were definitely classes I quite literally slept through, but that surely can't be why I'm dreaming of it now.

I've heard that psychologists who study dreams say there are certain templates to dreams, or dreams that most of us have at one time or another, and those dreams mean certain things. When you dream you've lost your teeth, it's because you're afraid of losing control; I've had that dream, I confess. When you dream of falling from a really high distance, it's supposed to mean something else; I've had a dream similar to that, a long, long time ago, but I was walking along a street and was suddenly launched high up into the air for no reason before I fell. It wasn't like I started on an airplane or cliff or something, it was more like an ACME springboard was hiding under a sidewalk panel and I was the first unlucky idiot to step on it.

Getting back on track, I've also heard that dreaming about standing at the front of the class, like when you're reading your paper aloud or whatever, and then it turns out you were naked the whole time, is supposed to mean something about vulnerability. I've had dreams of leaving the house without pants on, but again, those were teenage dreams, and these are different. I'm just in High School and I know I'm way too old for it. That's pretty much it.

So what am I to think when I wake up? Is it a sign that I'm ashamed of my life, that I didn't jump on the right opportunity at the right time? It seems like a really stupid notion, because trying to apply the metaphor to reality doesn't seem to work.

Tuition was climbing as I was going to school, and it spiked really high during the years I was 'supposed' to be in college. All these experts are saying people need to wait 'til their 30's to go to college because they're going to have to work until they're 70 or 80 (because they're going to live to be one-hundred and ten), and if they start as early as we're used to, they might find that they're degree will become outdated before they can retire. Most of the lessons I've learned in my life seem to have a similar theme: pace yourself. Everybody talks about 'seizing the day' and rushing to success because it won't come to you, yet a lot of the people who said that were married by 21, had two kids by 23, and were divorced by thirty. They're already in such debt, they may never pay it off in their lifetime. They're burning themselves on their own passion.

I'm not in any hurry, and I think that's healthy. It may come to be that I grow old without ever accomplishing some great thing, but I'll grow old without impregnating some girl I didn't love because we got drunk and didn't use protection, I'll grow old without ever going bankrupt, and I'll grow old without regretting some gamble I lost. Because I didn't gamble. I was methodical and safe, and I enjoyed watching the scenery as I drifted down the slow stream.

So why the dreams at all? Why do certain ones linger, when most are forgotten immediately? I couldn't tell you for certain, but I could tell you my guesses. My subconscious is kind of stupid. Sleep is there to help you sort through all you learned that day, to blend it together and let it settle through the wrinkles of your brain so you can make good use of the knowledge later. Dreams could be illusions created by the absorption process, incidental shapes that my subconscious sees and interprets like ink blots in a Rorschach test. Your mind either sees what it wants to see or sees the monsters it fears might be looking in the darkness. The subconscious is where emotions live, so fear and regret and insecurity get to play the game too.

 We all have to dream, because we all need to sleep, but we can't fool ourselves about blots of ink on card stock. The reason we have society and technology and culture is because we have that part of our brain that sees a black shape on a piece of white paper and knows it's just a bunch of ink that soaked in where it happened to fall. Logic is our best feature, so we need to be careful about when we let mindless emotion take over. Dreams aren't signs that it's time we make changes to our lives. Dreams are just blots of ink that stain a bit too long as our brain tries to soak it all up.

 Enjoy the pretty ones, but do your best to forget the others. Because the only way that unpleasantness can become real is if devote yourself to making it so.

A need for brutality

I had a brutal review of Winkle² on Book Country. The most honest and disapproving ever. I had already decided the manuscript would be reworked by the time I saw this, had already decided it would not serve, but all the same, it was useful.

He wasn't entirely right; I can use elipses, I can and should use italics, though he's right about never bolding things. Something I've done, in error and often.

He's right about not explaining who Rip van Winkle is, he's right about the sheer amount of exposition, but there's an implication about how far he thinks it should all go. There will be some drifts in that direction, but I need to account for who the advice is coming from, and for how far I want to go in his direction.

Luckily, much of what he said is in line with my own doubts, and support of one's doubts can often be as heartening as support of one's hopes. I need to be strong to be in this business, and strength means finding middle ground in the advice of people who haven't found much to love about what you've done.

So I need to read the review again and again, because this guy has the brains to lay some truths out as they are, intelligence evident by the ego such brains develop. I need to know when the ravaging is justified and when the complaint is simply born of a pet-peeve, a dislike that serves a purpose irrelevant to my own.

That will be the most brutal part of all. I'm a submissive creature; contrary to most people, I tend to find most advice safe and easy to follow. Rather than getting so huffy and and entrenched that I'm in danger of ignoring the valuable bits, I'm so convinced I've always been doing it wrong that I'm in more danger of letting people shake convictions I should be more certain of.

So I need to remember both sides of the coin and read this, the most scathing and professional (as unpalatable and laughably too-strong that word is in this situation) review I've had yet and separate the useful from the insulting. I need to let it hurt and learn how to shrug the pain off and remain pragmatic.

I've rarely tackled anything so difficult because I've never HAD to in my life. Everything about being an American has been made so easy because it's the maximum difficulty many (most) people can handle. We're born into accepting the flow around us, so if I find that flow too easy, it's up to me to seek out a better one, to set my own and stick to it, so that I might emerge into something more than I would have been. On the rare occasion when someone subjects me to something harsher, I should be thankful someone took my burden upon themselves for once. And I am.

I've got some hard pills to swallow, but I've got a thing or two to prove, as well. It may be just the combination I need. The first million words are practice? Even if Winkle² is as amateur as I fear, I'm still ahead of schedule.

I've got no business in this business

Inaugural stuff is often inaugurated with combusting blood, ignited by flinty heartbeats. I'm on fire, right this second, in spite of how lame this whole metaphor is! Inspired, motivated, and with the faint vapors of what talent I possess, we're going to restart and condense Winkle².

The biggest obstacle to its success is my tendency to burn out, so let's see if we can slow the burn into sustainability. Challenge accepted.

My name is Richard Jordan Bishop, colloquially known as Gordo, and when playing megalomaniac, I am The Almighty Gord! If there's something special about me, anything that would warrant a readership, it's not something I can convey in a basic hook. For simplicity's sake, I'm just going to say: there's no such warranting!

So this is written with the full knowledge that nobody's gonna see it. If they happen to, then it's written with the knowledge that they're not going to care. I possess knowledge, acceptance, and approval of that reality.

 My name is Richard Jordan Bishop, and I want to tell you some tales. If you liked them, then you may have arrived here: so welcome, and thank you.