Dreamscapes Podcasts - Dreamscapes Episode 115: The Sum of Subconscious Thoughts

Episode Date: March 1, 2023

"The best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Greetings friends, welcome back to another episode of Dreamscapes. Today we have our friend, just a random person like you. This is Math Dad Wizard from another Discord I'm in, and he's out in the middle of nowhere, USA, with Courage the Cowardly Dog. We're going to get right back to him in two seconds. Would you kindly please, like, share, subscribe, tell your friends, visit Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you can get downloadable MP3 versions of this to take with you to the gym

on your daily walks, whatever you do, you know, while you're doing things with your hands. You can listen to me. You can put me in your ears. Also, on that web, Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, you can find all currently available 15, hopefully, hopefully by the time this drops 16 available works of historical dream literature, I'm not going to mention book 15 anymore because I usually pop that up on the screen,

but book 16, hopefully, we'll be right here. We'll see. We'll see what I can do. That's enough about me. Whatever. Let's get back, let's get back to talking to our friend. I just wanted to say, you know, for the audiences' sake, thank you for being patient for like an hour of audio testing. That was ridiculous.

I can't believe we had to do that. No, no worries whatsoever. Like I said, I've been working on doing my own video stuff and audio is like the worst because you have to fiddle with it for hours to get it just right. Yeah. No. And my biggest thing is like, I'll listen to anything. I want it to be a good experience. I want you to sound good as the guest and I want it to be a good experience for the listener.

but I also need to dial it in on my end so I can make tweaks because your microphone's going to be different than the next guy is going to be different than the next guy. And that's, you know, so I needed to really work on that. You were a huge help today just, but we'll find some basic errors. Like I wasn't ducking my own audio input when capturing you. I didn't know there was a new beta audio output capture that would grab the application. You know, I use Discord. So people want to join me.

just, you know, reach out across a variety of social media. Say, hey, I want to jump into your Discord. I'll give it to you. And you can, we'll make an episode real easy. I'll talk to anybody. You don't have to be famous. You don't have to be a podcaster or have a book you're selling. I'll do all that for you.

So, so it's, well, I was going to start with the idea. And I was going to ask you about this, but I thought we'll save it for the, for the show. I am the dream wizard. You are the math wizard. I have a different word for that. I call you guys math and magicians. Math and magicians, yeah.

Yeah. That's a, that's a fun one. I remember, when I was teaching one of my first classes, one of my students, they gave me a gift. It was a Yu-Gi-a-card, the math magician, the card. Oh, hell yeah. I still have that card. It was a blast.

I was very happy about that. Oh, yeah, that is a, in my mind, a magic talisman, absolutely. It represents someone's positive thoughts towards you. It's this why we say tokens. I mean, they mean more than the object. You know, this is this particular person thought of me in a particular way that aligns with somewhat of what I see in myself. And how they perceive me.

Yes. And that aligns all together. And then you've got a physical and you can put it on display. And every time you look at that, you get a boost of, you know, positive feeling about a past event and, and an extra validation of, you know, you did something right. You made an impression on something. You did some good in the world, you know. Right. Well, I have this, I have this theory that sometimes people project their emotions onto objects.

Like, even if it's not like, you know, spiritual or whatever, they'll just, they'll just take. objects because they remind them of those things. It's just a physical memory trigger. Yeah. So if they come back to it, it just triggers that part in their brain. And they're like, oh, I remember these emotions and I can experience them again. So people like doing that. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. No, no, that's very much a thing. And I talk a lot about magic in a way that is both spiritual and practical. You know, the most recent episode called practical magic because this gal was talking about how she approaches making positive change in the world. in a way if I had to characterize it. So, and I very often say, there's, there's a magic in the gap between building knowledge and the sudden apprehension, the understanding of an idea.

There's a moment before you understand it and there's a moment of understanding that goes forward. Something happens between those two that we don't know what it is. I call that magic, you know, and, and, it's, if, if I may from just an educational standpoint, so I, I'm probably not going to remember the technical terms of, for it my education professor is probably groaning at me right now but it's something along the lines of it changing from external information to internalized information yeah the idea of it just being a tool that exists that I can use

towards oh this information is actually important and I can understand it in a way that's intuitive for me I want to say there's some there's some theory of education I want to say it's like a Russian teacher or something like that that developed it but it was something online of areas of competence where as people slowly become more confident and capable with the material, they start to view it more positively because now it's not just some information in a book somewhere, it's like, oh, that's information I can understand and use. So if I approach another topic that uses that, suddenly, you know, what used to be something

they were incompetent with becomes something they were competent with in humans love, you know, achieving and exploring new things where they feel they can succeed. So getting people to move along that scale, to move in different directions towards new competencies. It's like, like you said. It's like magic, just watching them slowly grow over time. Absolutely. And there's also a magic to the understanding and emotional impact, the concept of meaning that we assign to objects.

We assign it in some ways, and we also discover it. I have a broader theory of the world where I don't think there is any such thing as an invention, so to speak. Invention is what we term it when someone discovers a way to apply something that was already possible. So in some ways, it's a tautological argument of invention versus discovery. I think everything is discovery. Like the wheel, the concept of the wheel, the function of the wheel, the form of all the different possible wheels, that existed before we understood it. We evolved the capacity to see the form that could exist. in the world. It's like we can't imagine anything that is impossible to exist.

Right. You know, even the idea of a unicorn, we could say genetically engineer a horse to grow a bone out of its head. We could actually do that. It's possible. It's possible. Yeah, so technically anything you can imagine is kind of possible, even though if we don't know how to do it. Go ahead. Well, from a humble math guy's perspective, I mean, that people have that sort of conversation all the time, the argument of whether math is invented or discovered. And the conclusion, that winds up coming to the end of this after like, you know, 95% of the knockdown dragout is like what we are describing was always there, like the patterns existed, we just either didn't notice them or we didn't think to categorize them in certain ways before, but the

symbols that we use to actually do the describing. So like the addition sign was not a thing that I think existed naturally, but the concept of addition was something that was always there. Yes. Well, that's a very powerful concept, too, is that, and that goes to memes, the broader concept of memes. I think math, language, all language is memetic. It's, it's, we have a concept, and we put a moth the sound to the object to the symbol. We assign it a symbol, verbal, visual. I don't know if that's where you were going with that. Something along those lines, something along those lines. It's just, it's funny how many ideas mathematicians have almost kind of stumbled into because they start writing it down and then they try to do something with it that

like they thought these two ideas don't go together and then they try it and actually works imaginary numbers and complex numbers are like in math those are like the key example so like to the average person so like a number represents a quantity right and a negative number represents a lack of quantity so if someone here is five dollars and negative three dollars they think oh okay So I have five bucks. I owe someone three bucks. So realistically, I have two bucks overall. And so there's this other idea, though, of square roots, which is, you know, a number times itself gives you another number.

But that doesn't really work with negatives in the same way, because the negative times a negative is a positive, right? But there is a number that if you multiply it by itself, you get a negative number. It's called I. And the reason it's called I is because the people who discovered it, they were like, yeah, no, there's no way that can exist. that doesn't, you know, it fits outside of the framework of what we understand.

And so they were just like, we'll just call it, I will square it and make it negative one later. And then later on, you know, in things like quantum physics, where it's a very different approach to how reality works. They found that I is like supremely useful in that field of physics because it was just further outside their framework than they understood at the time. So it's like, so the concept. was there. And they even recognized that there was a concept there. They just didn't recognize that they didn't understand it. Yeah. And a lot of this comes down to teleology, I guess, people's religious, like quasi-religious faith in how the universe functions. So I suppose my base assumption, based on what? I don't know. It makes sense to me. I think it can be logically proved,

but you've seen some of the debates in the discord around like, here's an idea. And people go, that's dumb, that's wrong. And I'm like, but it seems obvious to me. Long story. Sure. Right. You got to start somewhere and then build from there. You do.

Well, and then I'll come back to that. There's a show I used to listen to. It was broadcast a weekly show on, I think, NPR out of Stanford University, where it was philosophy talk. That's the name of the show, philosophy. I don't know if they're still doing it. I stopped listening a few years ago, but got on other things. They always, in their philosophy department, it was one of their rituals.

And we were talking about the Yu-Gi-Gi-O card and the power we have. invest in objects, symbolic, and rituals are symbols of things as well. While I'm going all over the place, this is, you triggered my, my asspy brain. Okay. Long story short, symbols, philosophy talk. Fuck. Ah. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't lose it. Don't lose it. It was great. Symbols. Oh, fuck me. I went too far. I went too far about, rebounded out. It's okay.

Oh, their ritual, Jesus. They would always say the phrase, you know, a person. would make an assertion because we have to start somewhere. And they would say, thank you for asserting because you got to recognize we can't have a discussion unless someone says, what if this, a starting point. Thank you for making a proposal. A lot of people in debates get down to, I don't like that idea. It's opposite or what I believe. I think it's inherently false, et cetera, et cetera. And they latch right onto that and skip over the part where it's like, thank you for giving us somewhere to start. Now I think you're wrong and let me tell you why, but they jump straight.

Yeah. And that's, well, you see me in the in the debate stuff. And I'm, I'm not a debate bro. I mean, I don't do this verbally while I can share ideas. But if you're going to like challenge me to do so, I got to, like when I do the dream thing, I got to write it all down. And then we go through it piece by piece. Imagine me, this is why I got to do it in text version, because I got to write out my thoughts. I got to stop and think. Does that? Number one, I got to stop and think before I write. Then I got to edit my writing and say, Is I say what I think it says? Okay, those are the wrong words.

It'll be five minutes composing a three-sentence paragraph because I'm willing to do you to think about it. And I need to go back and read what other people read and go like, do I get that correctly? Wait, do I need to ask clarifying question. I can't do any of this verbally. I just can't. It's not where my skills is. You got to analyze your points and write them out in a way that's consistent with what you're thinking.

And that's hard. Yeah, well, to make sure it's relevant to what they were asserting, to make sure it's clear to me, to make sure I'm expressing it. And I've said this before. There's like four chances for everything to go horribly wrong. More than that, but four basic chances. What I think, how I say it, how they hear it, and how they process it. For minimum four chances for everything to go wrong.

If you are being as clear as you possibly can be. And if you're not, then it all goes to shit. And that's, I mean, I'm amazed. You know, what is it? Joe Rogan had a thing where he's like, we're monkeys who make sounds with our mouth and communicate telepathically. I can put my thoughts into your head. It's like, whoa.

Yeah, we're making these vibrations in a physical substance that vibrate something in your head and it gets turned into electrical signals that become thoughts. It's like, that's not magic. I don't know what the hell magic is. Right? Yeah, it's one of those things where part of it probably occurred naturally because, you know, sound is just something that, you know,

animals make when they're moving about in the world. So being able to detect sound is important. And then, you know, once you develop a species that can differentiate sounds to the point of very, like, specific tiny syllables, like, they're going to, they're absolutely going to utilize that to communicate. And now we have language, even though, you know, there are languages all over the world and they sound completely different. They're all built on this base idea of, I make noise, you know what I'm thinking. Yeah, exactly. Oh, and it's fascinating, too. There's a reason I'm a little bit obsessed with Greek.

in Latin roots because if you go back, a lot of these words that we use are composed of multiple other words strung together that give us a more complex idea. It's kind of, you know, building a brick wall, one brick at a time. But if you go back and you look at some of those roots, they are single syllable roots that each express their own idea. So you have, you know, modifier of idea, idea compressed. And then we go, okay, now we need a dictionary definition of multiple words that aren't the same words because you can't describe a word by using the word itself, which a lot of people don't realize today. That's a whole, that's a whole other dispute. Well, I actually, for the purposes of a fantasy novel I was working on a couple of years ago, I tried making my own language,

just out of curiosity. Tolkienesque, yeah. Yeah. Well, I wasn't going to go that far. I was like, okay, just, what would it look like and what would it be like to write a sentence in this language? Like, that was a key part of the scenes. What does it feel like to write this language? How to conjugate the syntax, et cetera. Yeah. And so basically what I wound up doing was, I was like, okay, I want it to be like a pictorial language. So, you know, the symbols each have their own meaning. When you combine them, the combined meaning creates a new word, that sort of thing.

And basically what I wound up doing was like it just turns into not quite Egyptian hieroglyphs. I don't know how familiar are you with Japanese kanji. Yeah. So, like, it was basically like that, but it had the Korean structure of, of basically the way you stack them makes it. So it's just more of the symbols. It's just more of the symbols as you go. Gotcha.

And so I wondered, I was like, you know, how many of those do you need to actually make a language that functions? And I was able to get a lot out of just six small symbols. Cool. And just the order of their importance. So that it was a weird exercise, but it was fun. Oh, yeah. Well, I've described memes.

as the framework upon which we hang our, upon which the, what is it, fuck, how did I say that? Memes are the framework upon which our perception of reality hangs. If that makes sense, it might, someone might have to sit and meditate on that little bit. That makes sense to me. But so, and it's also funny because we got, um, A, the symbol A, the symbol B, the symbol C. And you put them together in a row and you've got the beginning of the alphabet, but you've also got the ABCs. We move up a level and it's like, now this is the basics. What is as basic as what?

The building blocks of language itself. And so I've got the ABCs of dream interpretation and that's one by my clip channel here. And also where under which I release my books. And for me, the ABC stands for augury, bibliomancy and chaos. So we've gone from the basic symbols of an alphabetic structure to the. concept of the basic building blocks of something as a broader concept. And then I'm actually, then I refine it back down. It is that, well, here's the specific type of ABCs. But what it's doing is referencing the metanarrative of the basic building. Well, here's the basic building blocks

of dream interpretation. Here's the concepts I use and identify. It's kind of, it becomes this beautiful tapestry of interreferential multi-level analysis. Right. Same, uh, same idea is different spin. Same ideas people already know access in a way that leads them to new information. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it's, I love that stuff. I love feeling clever, whether anyone else agrees. I just enjoy the feeling. So that's, that's why I try and come up with interesting titles. A lot of these titles for the shows are, it's going to reference one thing as a pop culture phenomenon or as a literary reference or philosophical, but it's also going to have a double meaning if I can at all accomplish that.

And it's also going to, you know, specifically reference something the dreamer was experiencing in the dream as it relates to this. Almost every single one of my titles, you can find a double meaning in it. And I've, I've spent up to two hours looking for a decent title. And it just stops my whole process. I'm so obsessive. Well, I just, I just thought of this as we were talking. Yeah.

Could I feel as your potential title for this one maybe? Yes. Can you tell me after we analyze after we handle it? Because I don't want to. Okay. So another thing about my process. And we're going to get into it right away because you're running out of time. And we're already talked to.

I have the feeling I can talk to you for an hour and we wouldn't run out of things to say. What I do and for the audience. So you know, I don't want to hear your dream until right now, until we're sitting here together. I will overthink it. I will dream about it. I will bring my own assumptions. I will start building my own understanding. of it independent of the ability to have

direct feedback immediately from you before my ideas start taking over. So there's something about this that has to be a spontaneous, collaborative, interactive moment where we build the meaning together. I am, you know, as I've said to folks, the way I phrase it is,

none of these answers are in me. They're all in you. And all I'm doing is poking around the edges and shining a flashlight in the dark, trying to help you see what you've already seen, from as many different angles as possible as may be relevant. So yeah, so definitely I, so people have tried to say, here's my dream.

They put it in text and send it to him like, well, I can read it. I can start having my own ideas, but it's back and forth. I cannot do it in text. It's just not possible. Yeah. Anyway, well, you're here. So I'm not trying to talk you into it. Like explain.

Why they can't just send me their dream. You know, you can't send me your dream and ask, and ask for interpretation on Twitter. It's not going to happen. I just can't do it. But also don't tell me your dream. Just say, I have. have a dream. Good enough. I'll talk to anybody about anything. So they're all infinitely fascinating to me the problem puzzle solving aspect of it. And this girl's going to, she's rubbing on me.

Okay, we got to do this. I love you. Go. That's my compressed air. She's got to go away. She's going to lay on the keyboard. She's going to ruin everything. Speaking of which, you're limited on time. We're talking about dreams. Are you ready to do the thing? I am. So do I do it to start? Yeah. So basic process. Maybe I haven't done this in a while. I can explain or maybe I do it every time and I forget. I shut up and listen. You tell me the dream beginning to end like a story. Whatever you can remember. Don't worry about it. Anything is good enough. Then we go back through it again. Do a little bit of a deep dive. Try and put me looking through your eyes as much as possible. And then somewhere between phase two and phase three, we start putting together what makes sense, what feels relevant to you. You'll get a kind of visceral zing. You'll have aha moments that magic will happen that we can't explain. So, yes, begin at the beginning, and I'm ready when you are. Benjamin the Dream Wizard wants to help you pierce the veil of night and shine the light of understanding upon the mystery of dreams. Every episode of his DREAMs program features real dreamers, gifted with rare insight into their nocturnal visions. New Dremescape's episodes appear every week on YouTube, Rumble, Odyssey, and other video hosting platforms, as well as free audio.

books, highlighting the psychological principles which inform our dream experience and much, much more. To join the Wizard as a guest, reach out across more than a dozen social media platforms, and through the contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com, where you will also find the wizard's growing catalog of historical dream literature, available on Amazon, featuring the wisdom and wonder of exploration into the world of dreams over the past 2,000 years. That's Benjamin the Dream Wizard on YouTube and at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. So Dream Starts. I'm sitting in a movie theater that is nearby where I live.

It's about a 15, 20-minute drive. And so theater's dark, but there's nothing playing. So in my mind, I'm like, okay, movies over need to drive home. I've had a lot of mundane dreams in my life before, so this wasn't too much new at the beginning. So, you know, go out, get in a car, nondescript car. I don't know if it was the car I normally drive or not, but it was just a car. So I get in the car and start driving back home. At first, there's a bunch of cars on the road.

And so, you know, it's like, okay, there's a bunch of cars on the road, whatever. And so I go to take the back road home just because I don't like driving with lots of cars. So I'm going to take the back road I almost never take the back road home So I didn't think too much about it at the time I was like okay I'm taking the back road home You know I'm driving and I'm driving And then all of a sudden there's a deer in front of the car

And the car slams into it And so I've been in a lot of vehicles That have hit deer before and I've been in a lot of like car accidents So I have a very detailed set of memories about what that feels like. So normally

if something like that happens, I will wake up because it's like, oh, that's a feeling that, you know, I know that feeling and that's a feeling that says you need to wake up right now or pay attention to whatever's going on. But I didn't this time. And in fact, so

the car hits the deer, the deer I don't, it just kind of vanishes. Like, I feel like I blinked and I missed it. and then the deer was just gone. But I was, you know, in the dream, I was panicking because I was like, you know, I've hit a deer in a vehicle before. I know that that's a bad thing and I need to like stop and pull over or whatever, but before I can like think and regain control of the, like, think consciously about what I need to do, another deer hits the car. And so then I get, you know, that's not good. and so I'm just spiraling at that point

and then it just hits deer after deer after deer after deer and I think it was like seven or eight of them before my brain just finally had the response it's like it doesn't matter what you do you just need to not be here so I went to the other side of the road it was a back road so there wasn't really a lane per se but it was like I got in the other lane

and then there was just like this massive 16-wheeler heading towards me, and the next D.R. I was going to hit, then slams into the side of the car that I'm driving. And at that point, like, I don't like cars in the first place. So this is, like, a, like, a hyper-stressful situation for me. Um, so at that point, I just, like, I just, I have a complete mental breakdown. And I just, I just throw, I just completely let go of the wheel. Um, I just put my hands over my face. And I just wait. I'm just like, please. I'm just, like, please. make it stop, just make it stop. And I'm just waiting for that next impact.

And then after a couple of minutes or so, the impact doesn't come. So I slowly just take my hands off my face and I look up. And the car is on the side of the road. I'm not driving anymore. I'm in the passenger seat. Someone else is holding the wheel. I don't know who they are. It's just like a feminine silhouette.

And so I just like, I just go back to just like putting my hands over my face and just trying to calm down for a while. And then eventually once I felt I was like reasonably calm, that's when I woke up. Okay. Trying to catch up here. It's okay. Sorry. I talk fast sometimes. No, that's okay.

And honestly, I don't want guests to. regulate themselves in any possible way. I mean, if it's, if someone's talking really, really fast and I just can't possibly keep up, I'm going to say, okay, maybe a little slower. But that was fine. You're just telling the story. You've got, you're into it. You're seeing it.

I can kind of tell when people are reading from paper and when they're kind of back in it. And actually, you're closer to back in it, um, as you're telling it, which is brilliant. That's where we're, that's the dual purpose of the deep dive. I'm getting you back into it so I can see through your eyes. So that's what we're going to do. I'm going to try and go quickly here. here. I don't know if anyone can see.

It's going to darken my screen order. This isn't one entire page full of the story. I try to put everything on its own line if I possibly can all the different elements. There's different ways to do these. I mean, if you go back 100 years, you've got the Jungian and Freudian analyses. You've got people more recently like Paul. What is his name? Domhoff.

Bill Domhoff, William, G. William, Domhoff, I think is his name. Anyway, I've probably got that wrong. but one of my other ABC episodes, long story short, he got into the recording dreams in a dream bank. You can actually go to like dreambank.net, I think, something like that. Don't quote me. And what he does is he starts counting the appearance of things. So you have in your dream one car, seven or eight deer.

You've got one 16 wheeler. You've got one road. We've got one side of the road in a way. We've got changing lanes. We've got a lot of discrete instances. and he starts adding those up and calculating them in terms of how common are these things. And so I hope someday in the future to be able to do something similar to that saying, okay, by way of creating a new system in a way, like if you've got this kind of enumerated instances,

and those tend to mean certain things to certain people, and they all kind of line up, now we can actually start building a real dream dictionary that might be more useful than the old ones. a little more scientifically grounded. A little more scientifically grounded, which is funny. You know, psychology is definitely that art and science type of thing. Like there's a science to this, and I've got that as a foundation. And now we're freehand watercoloring because... There's a difference between a neurobiologist and a psychologist for a reason.

Neurobiologists can tell you what area of the brain is active. I can hopefully tell you why. Hopefully. Right? Very interesting, too. We used to... Well, because of functional MRI. eyes. We used to think people only had dreams during REM sleep. Now we have shown that there is brain

activity all night long and it peaks and troughs, you know, in different ways. And that if you awaken people outside of REM sleep, they will often, we've known this for a couple hundred years at least. They will often report they were in the middle of a dream. I personally think that means we dream constantly from the moment we fall asleep to the moment we wake up. We do not remember most of it because it's below that awakening threshold where we can form a memory of having had thoughts in our sleep. Yeah, different levels of brain activity accessing different things. So different motor functions are available at different times. Yeah, and they're still dreaming, but you're dreaming in different ways at different models.

Yeah, what's I, I liken it to the, I love my analogy. So, you know, the lungs breathe, the heart beats and the brain thinks. It's what it does. It never really stops unless it's damaged or you're dead. from the moment the brain is there, it just shooting electrical signals everywhere. So, yeah, and then you get people like me. It's like, I very often remember that I had a dream, no details whatsoever. I use a famous example.

I was standing outside the rear, you know, passenger door of a vehicle. That kind of a vague impression is all I get. So anyway, this is about you, not me. I can talk. This is why I try and ask people to set aside two hours. I ramble and I think it makes an interesting conversation. but I repeat myself a lot. So I've already got some ideas.

Let's put this here. I forgot to write down a timestamp question mark. Okay. You are, it's okay, so it's very interesting. Everything is very interesting, but it starts in a movie theater and the movie has ended. So I, okay, I would like to do a classic deep dive. I don't think we have time for it. I'm going to be a little more suggest.

as we go through it, but we're going to go through it chronologically. To me, the idea of the movie theater suggests, no, why, okay, so the question is, why would you start this segment of a dream with that impression? The first thing that comes to my mind with a movie theater is the idea of you're being shown a fantasy, a fiction. Does that comport with kind of how you think of movies in general? you know you've been there for entertainment or you've been there to you know hear a story that's you weren't watching a documentary in the theater right it was it was a movie no yeah well um normally uh yeah yeah i watch movies to be entertained but i'm very selective about the movies i watch typically i'll only watch them if i um you know if i've heard good things about them just like sitting down

to watch a movie is an investment of time in a way i'm i like to have my time so someone asked me I ask two questions. One, the person would want to be the movie are we going to see. For sure. You spend time with the people before and after the movie, but then there's the movie itself. So, you know, you know, you don't want to see a bad movie. Or if they want to see a bad movie,

you can at least try to talk them into seeing a good movie, you know? Yeah. Well, tell me if this particular phrasing resonates with you. When a movie ends, you come back to reality. Is there a concept in there that rings? Yeah, well, part of the problem is, so I, like I said, I work on fantasy novels and I do a lot of my own writing. So sometimes when I'm watching movies, I don't necessarily watch them to be engrossed in them. Sometimes I'm watching them with the intent purpose of studying them and learning from them.

So did you have a sense in the dream at that moment of why you had been there? What was the takeaway? You know the only had just ended? Not really. there are some movies that I've gone and seen and then after they're over they just immediately leave my thoughts it doesn't happen very often

but it was more of like oh you know I'm here I was here to see a movie now movie is over done here and you were alone you were not with anyone this was yeah I was I was alone I don't remember anybody else being in the movie theater

I think if you did remember I mean even if it was just vague yes I was with other people I don't know who they were that would suggest a different setting. This is you alone entertained maybe or analyzing. What I'm looking at is there's a metaphor to coming out of a movie theater. And that's why I phrased it as of coming back to reality type of things. Like you've been entertaining something not real.

And now you're going back to the real where there's real problems or more, more pressing concerns. There's something in there. Is it resonating with something? Would you say it a different way? That's what maybe the best I can express it. A little bit. Yeah, a little bit. I have a couple of projects that are, well,

so like I said, I've been working on fantasy novels for a while now, but I haven't seriously entertained the idea of writing one for the sake of publishing because I haven't really thought about them being, like, solid enough, like just the writing quality is not as good. And there's one that I've recently, started redoing. It was one where, it was five or so years ago, and when I

wrote it, I did it from start to end, and I read back over it, and I was like, eh, I like this story, but it's not good enough. The prose isn't good enough. The structure's not good enough. I need to take some time to actually work on it and work on making that side of it good.

And recently, I did have the experience when I rewrote the first chapter of it, where I compared it to the original chapter, and it was just like, night and day. It was so much better. I was like, I was going to cry. I was like, holy shit.

I might, like, I could, I could legitimately do this. I could actually do this all of these, you know, years that I've spent getting better out. When did the dream happen in relation to that experience? It was, let me double check, because I can actually pull up a number here. One sec. Okay, so that was. So that was, oh my God, that was only like four days ago. Holy crap.

The dream itself was about four days ago. Yeah, the dream itself was about four days ago. And I want to say the new writing experience was like a week, maybe two weeks ago. Okay. The only reason I would focus on that is so there's, there's all kinds of ways to get to free association. And one is to start talking about something. And then the brain starts following channels that are connected. And where we got to from leaving a movie theater was I'm working on a fantasy novel.

It just kind of flowed into it. So that doesn't mean that is necessarily our only answer. But something, there's something connected to that experience, the way you're understanding it, the way it might relate to other, the way it might belong to a higher order category of experiences that you're trying to process through this, through this dream. So, you know, eventually at some point I always try to remember to get around to when did the dream happen and what was going on in your life at that time. And so there's something about you maybe, likely, processing that experience of looking at your own work in an improved form and the possible inspiration that gave you to say, you know, this is, this, this looks more possible.

And then you go, you know, so then you're coming out of a in the dream. You're coming out of a movie theater, which represents to you, you know, a time investment, a, you know, a social activity usually do with, for it. But this is alone. So you're alone in the movie theater. The movie has ended. The dream is not there to show you a movie. It's to say, imagine you're coming back from a movie. You're going home from this fantasy experience, from a fictional experience.

I was looking at it, you know, the idea of fiction or theory versus real or practical. There's something in that connection of like we have ideas. Oh, I wonder if that's possible. And then we start looking at how possible it is. Is it possible for me? How would I even do that? That kind of thing. So there's some kind of thought experiment going on here where you're like, okay, in the context of returning from Fantasyland in a way, where you've put the real world on hold, now you've got to look at the real world.

You've got to look at something maybe more realistically, objectively, objectively. So that kind of resonating as a bit of a theme for that opening idea? Well, I did actually consider taking some time off to actually work on set novels. So that makes sense. I love my job, so I haven't really considered taking time off. very much ever unless I'm like insanely just overworked or something like that. Yeah. So this, well, for this job, there have been other jobs that I did not like that I did take time off because it was like, oh, I really just don't want to work this job.

Yeah. And even jobs you love can be extremely stressful and sometimes just need a break. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Even if you love it, it's like, oh, it takes so much energy. you know, that kind of a thing. Fair enough. So, and don't latch on to anything and don't think I'm necessarily correct, but I'm throwing out these ideas. So something's, we're just thinking about it.

Yeah, we're looking at a giant block of marble and clay and we're like starting to chip off little pieces and like, does it look like anything yet? Maybe not yet. And eventually, hopefully, Michelangelo's David, you know, if I may humbly say so myself. So you, okay, so you're thinking to yourself, well, the movie's over time to drive.

home. So there's something about, you're not going somewhere else. You're going home. You're going whatever home means to you. You know, it's definitely, there's all kinds of different ideas. Home is where the heart is. Classic, classic things like that. It's also home is where we keep our stuff. Home is where our relatives, our closest family live, you know, maybe. Home is where we feel safe. Home is our space. When you think of home and returning home from an excursion of any kind even for entertainment does does anything come to mind um means i don't have to drive anymore yeah and you don't like driving in general driving is a purely unenjoyable utilitarian practice get me from point to point b yeah do what i have to i i would really rather not um yeah because

the only reason i would go like drive to a movie theaters because there's not one nearby Sorry, I had to scare the cat away again. Home is not driving. Yeah. So there's, I mean, well, for sure, that's kind of where you went immediately with it. It means that means the trip is over. I've arrived. I don't like travel either.

I do not like leaving my house. I was a little late today because I had to walk to the end of the block in, I mean, the roads are literally one big sheet of ice, baby steps, very slow. Pitre, pitter, pitter, pitter, peter, peter. Actually, I don't mind travel that much. It's driving specific. Fair enough. So like planes, boats, great, love them, cars.

Yeah. So you put yourself into the least favorite mode of travel to get home. Yes. There's something in there. Yeah, you didn't walk. You didn't jump on an airplane. You are driving home from the movie theater. So you're taking a rather unenjoyable,

utilitarian mode to return from a theoretical place. to your, to a more real, real place, to the more practical world, to the, to the problems of reality in a way. There's something, something in there? Maybe. I mean, realistically, I don't know. I, I, I, because I love my job, I, and I'm an overachiever naturally, I have a bad tendency of overworking myself and doing, like, work away from work and things like that. So, like, to give a perspective, it's like, okay, so I have work. I sometimes do stuff outside of work, but I'm also writing my own statistics textbook,

partially because I want to, partially because there's only one stats textbook I've ever read that I would actually recommend to anybody. The manga guide to stats, if you've ever, if ever you need it. And I run games for my friends on the weekend with, like, Dungeons and Drives. dragons and stuff and I try to do other stuff. Like, I do, I feel like I do too much sometimes. Fair enough. Yeah.

And I don't set enough time to decompress. And recently I started working, like, more time overall, like, during the year. So, like, I don't have as much time as I normally have to do these things, which is part of the reason why I considered, you know, specifically taking time off to do this sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I think that all relates to. I'm trying to figure out where to go with it without trying to make a few pronouncements, a few firm suggestion as this is possible trying to make, you know, so try to be careful how I phrase things.

I say it as best I can sometimes. But, okay, so we got two things that happen next. We focused a lot on getting out of the theater and what it means and getting into your car to go home. It's nondescript car, too. It wasn't your actual car. That's interesting, too. There's something about that. This is an unusual mode of conveyance.

It is not literally your car. You are heading to your house from a local movie theater. You've said it all in a very realistic setting. This is not an unknown town in a foreign country on the moon. You know, it's it's very, very, like you don't have to deviate much from the actual to get the message of what this is saying, that it very much relates to what you are experiencing and what you have experienced as a metaphor for something similar you're going through now. So, okay, I said two things.

First, you realize you're hitting traffic and you just don't like to be around a bunch of other cars. It feels threatening because someone else is going to be an idiot and get you hurt or it's frustrating to be blocked in your progress, too much traffic. How would you describe it? I like to think of myself as patient, so I'm usually not that. bothered by being behind people, although that can be annoying, but usually only if it's like an absurd extreme. But yeah, it's more of the someone's going to do something stupid. And, you know, it's like you can't control other people.

That's just an inevitability that someone makes a bad decision or they have bad reaction to something. And that negatively impacts other people. And like there's nothing you can do about that. That's just a reality. the only way to not be a part of that is to completely remove yourself from the situation. But there's not necessarily what you always want to do. Because even if you're in a bad spot and you're being negatively impacted by someone,

that doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. It just means that you're not necessarily where you want to be. Yeah, for sure. So in this estimation of the dream, you're not looking at gridlock. That's not what causes you to say, I can't make progress without taking another path. It's more of there's just too many other people. I'm not going to take the risk.

I don't want to deal with the. Yeah, I don't want to deal with all that. I don't want. Okay. So there's more of a distaste for the situation rather than a practical blockage. Like physically, we're at a dead standstill on the freeway, nowhere I can go. This is more like just a discomfort with the idea of how many people were there. So you decided to take a back road.

And this is a back road you're familiar with. It exists in real life. Yes, is a real load. Okay. And these back roads take you through the country where deer would be likely, or is this deer coming out between houses in the suburbs? Well, it's through the, it's through the country. So like there's a possibility for deer, but I can't in living memory remember much deer ever being there. Like I'm not seeing more than two, but I don't remember them being many.

And you have multiple deer accidents because you've lived in the country before. Yes. And, okay. Yeah, I've, I've had some close calls. I actually hit one once, but luckily I hit the brakes. I hit him at about 15 miles an hour. He staggered and got up and ran across the road. And that was the only time I hit a deer.

Very fortunate, no damage to me or the deer as far as I can tell. You know, he probably got a few bumps and bruises, but didn't cave in my hood and go through the windshield. They always get up and walk away afterwards unless they're down. Right. Yeah, even if they're, even if they got a broken leg, they get up and get the hell out of there because they're like, you, this is, it's a predator. I'm going to die. You know, they get that. you got to move baby girl she is trying to walk on my keyboard go i love you i love you

go i just can't today there's no time um okay so any landmarks you could identify right before or the moment of you hit the first year uh were you at a particular place on that real life journey uh uh I remember a, there's a point where that dirt road splits and you can get back on the main road or you can keep going kind of, you know, in the country road or go back. I remember driving past that and I didn't get back on the main road just because I didn't want to get back into like traffic. Okay. And yeah, and then shortly after that, that was when that happened. Yeah.

There's definitely something going on here of choosing your path. choosing your path away from a certain kind of problem, choosing to brave a different kind of problem, showing yourself at that moment, I knew there was something that happened right before that deer. Well, I suspected. I know, but that there was some, and that was the moment you could have chosen to go,

well, I could put myself back on the main roads. I could go back to what's familiar. I could go back to what's paved for me. I could deal with that kind of traffic versus this different kind of risk. And you decided to stay on that road and immediately showed yourself, well, here's the consequences.

You're going to hit a deer. And you did. And like, whoa, instant panic in the dream. And you said, I don't know if it came back around, but that deer, you know, your response was immediately to blink or for some reason, you know, the deer bounced off the front. No serious damage. I didn't see where the deer went. It just like it hit the, like there was the impact and I blinked when it impacted the vehicle.

And then by the time my eyes opened again, it was gone. Gotcha. Interesting. So you showed, and any damage to you, damage to the vehicle as far as you could tell? The vehicle was still moving. It was weird because I've been in a vehicle that's hit a deer in a nature similar to this before. And I don't know why. Like, I was more panic than I would have been if I had hit a deer in real life. Gotcha. Yeah. So this, this deer you're confronting is more scary than real deer. Yeah. If that makes, yeah, that makes perfect sense to me if you kind of get what I'm saying. Well, yeah.

Well, I think it was because like the, it was because it felt like it just materialized in front of me. Like I, I've said when I've hit a deer before, it's like, you know, they run and jump out in front of you from where you can't see because that happens sometimes. But like, it was, it was like unrealistically fast. It just appeared. Oh, yeah. No, for sure.

And that's where I'm getting to with this idea is that, um, there's a difference between a problem you can see coming that you can't avoid. And then there's problems that you know are probably there, but you can't predict when they're going to strike or how hard. And they're going to look like they come out of nowhere, even if you were expecting them. And you probably were. You're like, ah, shit, this is, this is deer country, you know.

This is a bat country. So there's something about that. And yeah, yeah, the sudden, unexpected and you know you're expecting a problem but you never know when it's going to hit there's a level of tension anxiety that that comes with that is like uh the the moment in a movie before i jumps you know the the volume drops and yeah go ahead probably that was why i was surprised was because i wasn't expecting it like there's there's not usually deer like that on that road and i didn't see i didn't really see it much at all but the instant before i hit it was the only time i saw it

Gotcha. Okay. And there was no panic anxiety going into it of like, oh, oh, oh, I better get ready. But that, I think that kind of reinforces a little bit of where I was going with it. It's like you've chosen a path where your brain knows country. Dear, dear, dear, dear a problem, you know, but you weren't even really thinking about that. But immediately you show yourself, look at this thing, you've a negative thing you've experienced before. It's going to come out of nowhere or it, you know, the possibility that unseen, unforeseen, maybe unforeseeable problems. Because you can't really anticipate at what point on the country road a deer's going to pop out. You know, it's, unless you get the deer crossing signs, like they always cross there. Fair enough.

You slow way down. You're just trying to get home. Yeah, so there's something about like your brains crystallized this idea of one of the worst experiences in your life. Not the worst, not the most traumatic thing ever, but bad enough. Like something you don't want to have happen again. And it's happened more than once. And now it's saying, okay, whatever this concept you're exploring, it's like the risk of deer. And not only that, you're going to hit one out of nowhere.

And it's going to, and you're going to, you're going to react. You're going to have this category of problem that's going to cause even more distress than the problem you're comparing it to. Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. Just to try and kind of nail that down a little bit. And not only that, it's going to keep happening.

Because, you know, you've committed to a path. You didn't stop and turn around and go back to the. main road. You're, you're showing yourself, I'm on this path now and the deer keep coming, another seven or eight deer. Any difference in the experience with those? Are you starting to see them coming, but you can't stop? Yeah, yeah. I, well, I saw the last one. I remember seeing the last one, but I remember just the panic got worse because it was like, okay, I feel like this is going to happen again, but I don't know where they're coming from. Like, I don't know why this is happening, but it keeps happening. And so, you know, brain's just like, all right, this is going

to continue if you don't do something. But I'm so panic, I didn't know what to do. Yeah. And panic rising. Okay. So you've got, you're showing yourself, my estimation, what I think I'm seeing, you're showing yourself enough repetitions of a particular kind of problem that finally, you kind of get it enough to say, okay, the last, between that last one where you've figured out the pattern and the next one you're like oh I'm going to hit oh now I kind of see it coming now that's a different you've had a paradigm shift in your head a perspective change and it's that moment when you've you've been able to finally understand the pattern that you say I need to change lanes now I need to take a different approach to this problem and what it did was it put you in the path of an oncoming semi

you went from bad but worse and then the deer hit me in the side anyway yeah and then which uh which side uh it was the it was the right side because i got over in the left lane and then the deer hit me on the right side so you were and then we're talking um you know uh just like the right side of a dirt road yeah well um because i definitely didn't see the semi until i switched lane yeah and this is why partly why i ask uh asked questions so it's a dirt road and they're usually narrow i mean if you're gonna pull over to let another car pass but usually you're right in the dead center because it's kind of one lane. Usually, yeah.

It's, yeah. So you were dead center this whole time, down the country road or on the right hand side like driving in a, you know, city streets? Well, it is, I was towards the right side of the dirt road. I tend to,

yeah, just stick closer to the right because, you know, that's probably, traffic. That's probably what I do. Yeah, it just feels more natural.

And then you actually kind of, you don't, so you don't exactly change lanes, but you drift over to the other side, which is very unnatural. before you, you and me both. It's like, this doesn't feel as good, but it's a change. You're changing lanes is a fair enough way to say it, hugging the left instead of the

right. And then that's when you see there's a semi coming. And that's when a deer who might have been in your path, he just decides to hit you anyway. I mean, now the problem is coming to find you. You've moved. You've moved. And now this one, it comes and finds you anyway.

So you've got a dual thing, you know, changing something didn't solve the problem. It actually put you at risk of another problem and the same problems are still finding you on this path. I don't know if this is, I might want to stop there for just a minute and kind of let you process that and decide if you have something to say. Um, well, my brain is just like, uh, this is going to sound weird. Go ahead. Um, I really value my vacation time, like days I don't have to work. are very, like, valuable to me. And so,

when I work more, I have fewer of them. I have more flexible choices of when I can take them, but there are less of them. And so I haven't really been thinking about what that, like, lack of vacation time is going to be like. It's like, okay, so what days in my taking this, when is a good time to take this? And especially during this like previous winter where there was an extra like three or four weeks I don't normally work that I was working on stuff.

That was very stressful in a way I don't know how to articulate properly. Because like I was I was still doing my job and I still loved it and I still liked what I was doing. but it was just the idea of not having that time is very different and then on the time I did have off it was less it was not pleasant I was very much looking forward to that small span of time where it's like okay so now it's drop from like eight weeks to three weeks and it's like okay so I'm just gonna relax and not worry

and be stress fee during those three weeks. And that was not even close to what happened. Gotcha. So it was like, oh, you know, I'm going to, you know, be home for the holidays and, you know, maybe spend some time with friends and family. And then it was like everybody else's everything just immediately started falling apart. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

And so I'm just there and I'm like, okay, well, my options now are just leave everyone alone and just like try not to be a part of any of that. This guy right here, she's puking on my bed. She's puking on my bed right now. Oh my God. Not to interrupt you. I was like, I'm hearing it. Like, oh, God, I'll go clean it up later.

Whatever, watch them like it. That's okay. No, no, you, so I am paying attention to your problem. Sorry. So you actually are anticipating a rather relaxing vacation time that you highly value and suddenly a bunch of responsibilities popped up that you just couldn't ignore. I mean, it was people important to you and now you're helping them deal with their problems. Well, I don't know if I would call it responsibilities necessarily, because, like, it's not my job to take care of those people, if that makes sense.

But I don't know. I feel like I should at least try to help. Yeah. Because, you know, if you try to help and then you can't, you know, well, then you can throw up your hands and say, well, yeah, well, I, I tried. I did my best, you know, the fact that I care is not just a mental thing. physical thing as well, that's, that's important. No, for sure. And there are self-selected responsibilities. Um, yeah. You know, I could very easily just stop feeding my animals and they could all die. But I care. I care not to have that happen. So this is, you know, and pets, I could give

them all the way too. And we're trying to rehome some cats. But, but, but the idea of I'm not able to like, what's the point of me having a bunch of free time if I spend the whole amount of that free time miserable that I'm not doing what I could to help someone. and that they are suffering. That's a big problem to me. And I think you were, so when I say, you, you, you don't have the kind of parent child responsibility where you made a person and now you need to make sure they're healthy. These are grown, don't ask adults or relatives and they could maybe take care of their

own thing, but that doesn't sit well with you doing nothing to help other people. Fair enough. And that, that kind of came up of just me starting to summarize some of these things. This is all, this is all very much related to trying to work your way through, those bias, broad strokes estimation, trying to try to choose a path, trying to work. your way through problem solving navigation travel stuff is always metaphorically connected in my estimation to navigating a path between where you're at now and where you want to be there's something something to that uh and and some dreams maybe not so much but this one very much looks like a problem solving

potential future behavior in a way like what if i try this what if i try that what is this going to look like how am i going to feel about it um broad strokes. We're getting there too. We're actually a little over your time. How much time you got left? Five, ten. Sorry,

someone at the door. I had to meet myself for a second. Fair enough. I hope you were able to hear me. Were you at your AirPods? I had the headphones on. Gotcha. I could hear you,

but my brain, my train of throwing. Well, speaking of which, I was asking, was that your wake-up call, so to speak, like you're about, you're about out of time?

Um, yeah, I'm running long on time. Gotcha. Well, I'm trying to go as fast as I can. I usually take a lot longer getting, getting through these things. Well, at some point, you decide moving forward is no longer a good idea and you pull over or you just suddenly find yourself by this. You've been involuntarily pulled over.

I found myself by the side of the road. I did not. And we did not pull over yet. Because there was a moment where you had just been hit by the deer. The semi is coming. You just cover your eyes and take your hands off the wheel. And suddenly you're, you've, you've given up complete control. anticipating nothing you can do is going to make anything better.

And suddenly you're safe. Suddenly you are, well, you have stopped forward progress along this path. Yeah. Choosing to surrender control was a way of, a way of doing that as well. If I stop acting, if I stop driving, literally driving myself forward along this path, I could just stop. And that's the moment then you realize, wait a minute, now I'm a passenger. And there's this feminine female feminine,

silhouette in the driver's seat? Yeah. And that, and then you put your hands over your face again to calm down. And as the feeling dissipated, that's when you woke up. Yes. Gotcha. So there was an act of surrendering control while you were moving forward on the self-selected path.

That act not only moved, stopped the forward progress and moved the car over to the side, but it put some. well the car was in a different place like it wasn't pulled over exactly where it was it was further down the room fair enough so you got past the problem yeah in some ways by just surrendering to it whatever happens happens i'm not even going to watch i can't watch uh this is too it's overwhelming to the point where i can't even watch what happens to myself uh and then you're past it but you pulled over so something took over something else drove you past that because you're showing you're showing you yourself, I don't know how I got through it, but I was a passenger during that experience.

And now I'm realizing I was a passenger and whatever was moving me forward. And I look at, I look at the idea of showing yourself, you know, it was not a masculine presence. It was not a rabbit. It was, you know, speaking of which I love the, I love the whole, we haven't even mentioned the V-tuber thing. I've never done that before. It's fantastic. It was specifically a feminine presence. So if we look at like, I love to go into the Jungian thing.

And I think it's absolutely true. It goes way, way before Jung. Young just looked at the yin yang. We all have yin and yang within us. We have our masculine and feminine side. He called it the animus and the anima. And I think you're, I think if this resonates with you, you're conceptualizing. There's something about a broadly feminine approach, putting that in control of the driving process, got you through it.

or the you assumed if you got through it it had to be the driver had to be a feminine silhouette and it's not a specific person it's not your mother necessarily it's not your sister it's an idea of the non-specific feminine there's something about that feminine energy that had a positive influence on keeping you safe resolving the problem in a manner that you don't really understand like you didn't see what happened and you don't know what happened you didn't tell yourself you understood it is that what was that what What do you think about all those? I threw a lot of words at you. Well, my brain is thinking because since then, I've actually, I've tried to do some different things to, like, relax. And I was kind of trying to do that at the time when I had the dream was, like, you know, relax and not, not over-stress it because, you know, clearly there are real-life stressors. You don't need to add extra ones.

That's true. And just, you know, just take a step back and just, relax and make a conscious effort to sort of, you know, set aside that time that I've had less of recently. And I remember, I don't remember what day it was this week, but I was listening to, I want to say it was, uh, Dow philosophy and there was just, you know, this very peaceful guy reading it with like, like, calming nature sounds in the background. Okay. And, uh, And I was driving at the time. I was driving on my commute to work in the sun.

And I just remember being a lot more relaxed and just present. I don't know how to say this. I'm very sensitive to touch. So when I'm riding in a vehicle, I can, like, if there's a part that's moving away, it's not supposed to, I can almost not necessarily know exactly what it is, but have a feeling of what direction it's in. Gotcha. The car was running just fine, and we're going down the road, and it's very tranquil experience that just kind of stuck out to me in my mind.

So maybe it's just the idea of, like, because one of the things I do is, so with anxiety, one of the conscious thoughts I have that helps me deal with it is, okay, is this anxiety going to help me do what it is I need to do next? And typically the answer is no, and, like, consciously I can recognize that, and that can help me, like, relax physically. But there's a big difference between consciously processing your emotions and subconsciously processing your emotions. And you need to approach them differently. And I've been trying to work better on that. But it's hard because how do you, what do you even do to make that happen, you know? So that's been something. For sure.

Yeah. No, I think that's all very powerful. And it took us kind of analyzing the dream to get to that that you've been lately trying to de-stress a little bit. Try and find your Zen. Try and ride it out a little bit better. And I think there is, you know, broadly speaking, Yin Yang, masculine energy is very action dynamic.

Feminine energy is very calm, Zen, tranquil pond. There's two, you know, and they're neither one is superior. A lot of people think of Yan Yang masculine. Yeah, yeah. There is times when you want. the soft, especially in a pillow. There's times when you want the hard, in a hammer. Different tools for different jobs, and they're both extremely valuable and supreme in their

Beilwick, in their area. I can't think of a better word. No one knows what a Beilwick is, but anyway, I read too many, but I got a vocabulary. I can't use half of sometimes. So, okay, so broad strokes, trying to wrap, bring it all together and tell yourself a story. You're like, so rather than that. than movies being fantasy to reality necessarily. I think as you said in the beginning, it's more like vacation time.

Okay, vacation's over. Now I got to do something practical. Now I got problems to solve. I got to get home. I got to go wherever home is. There's traffic. I can make a choice and not deal with this many people. There's something unappetizing, something about that path that makes it less appealing to you.

I just don't want to deal with that. But then you find you pick the other path and there's all kinds of problems anyway. Oh, whoa, worse problems. they come at you long enough to start seeing a pattern. You try to change your approach. And you put yourself squarely in the path of a huge problem that you're like, why would they, why would they even be a semi in this road? This is a dirt road.

Semis don't go down. They were like, here's like the worst thing you'd imagine, head on collision with a semi. And you still haven't saved yourself from the problems. But you surrender. You actually close your eyes. It can't Jesus take the wheel. And whatever gets you through. true, this overwhelming stressful experience has a very feminine energy to it.

And you find out if I just let go a little bit and let the feminine energy drive the car, propel me forward, I can just be as if I'm on the side of the road, take a deep breath, calm down, let it go. And then you wake up. When I put it all together a little bit like that, does that generate something? Actually, funnily enough, there is a project I'm working on at work. It's one of the newer things. It's one of the reasons why I'm working more days.

And it is not, like, I'm not working with students on it. I'm building a program that will eventually I'll be working with students for, but I'm spending a lot of time kind of by myself working on it, setting stuff up. I do have someone who works on it with me, but they don't, like they have their side. I have my side. Gotcha. And I have a lot on my plate on that project, but it's self-paced, but I'm also trying not to, like, do large swaths of it outside of work because I could very easily do that, but that's not sustainable. That's going to make me worse at all the things that they normally do.

And so I can't, you know, I can't do that. That's not a good long-term solution. I need to actually, like, you know, take time off, relax and be, just be, just save that efficiency for when I'm actually, doing it. Yeah. Because, you know, that's going to make me better on both fronts. This,

this very much does now that we've kind of brought it all together, look like a dream of you looking at the sustainability of your chosen path and all the problems you're encountering and how, how overwhelming it is. And you're like, this, I need more of the Zencom. I need more time away.

I need a lot of people look at self-care as indulgent. But in some ways, it's like it's literally not, it's literally not spinning too many plates. at a point you just can't balance them all. And the entire plate spinning operation crashes because you added one too many plates. There's a very practical reason to not overwhelm yourself with more than you can think about and physically accomplish. So I use another analogy too where it's like if someone is on the ground and you want to help them up, you cannot be about to tip over balancing on the tippy toes of one leg and then reach out and help them to their feet.

They're going to pull you over. You must be in a strong, stable stance to reach a handout and help others. And that means you've got to assume that stance on purpose. You got to put yourself in a good position mentally, emotionally, physically your needs met. And then you can reach out and take on additional responsibility. You do too much. You fall apart. And when you burn out, who's the guy that's going to help when they have a problem, you know?

Exactly. Does that all kind of tie it all together and seem to fit with the dream? It does. And it makes sense to me that does make a lot of sense. Although speaking of spinning plates, I do have to be able. You got to go. And we're going to wrap it up. Yes, I wanted to do that and bring it all together for you.

I'm just going to say, this is the end. Thank you to Math Dad Wizard from Middle of Nowhere, USA, a friend on another Discord server. And you all can reach out to me. Have a contact page at Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com. 15, hopefully 16 works of historical dream literature you can find right there. Benjamin the Dream Wizard.com is going to keep saying that. I'm just going to say, you know, math dad, fellow wizard, it was good talking to you. It was good talking to you too.

Y'all check out the new book. Right on. Everybody out there, thanks for watching. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.