3 Dreams

 Number, Number, Weight, Division , or so goes the famous Pharos's dream. Mine are rarely that dramatic.

Virus, Parking, Fire ? Hardly going to make this one ground breaking. But as in the past I like to sometimes use my dream as a sounding board. It was unusual to recall 3 dreams in one night, so this is a little unpack. It probably means I awoke at least twice. although I feel I slept poorly, my head does hurt today after lying awake a long stretch before the alarm went off.

1. The Computer Virus

This one is strange, the kids have a new animatronic toy, it's a Rube Goldberg type puzzle in a large plastic tube with wires, and a remote control. But while the kids are playing with this thing, I notice my computer saying "you have been infected" every 2 minutes, as I investigate the screen opens a million browsers, and I turn the power off.

2. The Parking Nightmare

I arrive at the same office park where I work, but on a gray Saturday afternoon, for a charity event held in the conference facilities, only to find the entire parking lot covered in a heavy plastic sheeting. Bizarre. So I park on the street and as I walk I notice the sheeting has been moved to make space for a retired friends car, because he is a blue badge holder I think, and has to get a wheelchair for his wife.

3. The Fire

This one starts with a shit, literally. I open the bathroom door and it's obvious the loo has backed up. I start recriminating myself for not paying attention to the warning signs of this event and open the front door to go and verify with the neighbours, only to find what looks like someone's chimney producing loads of smoke. It's coming from near my friend's house, so I walk briskly down the block , where the smoke is not so thick it's hard to see. Then I notice that it looks like it has been snowing. Which is actually fire supressing foam, not snow, and that a large fire has destroyed businesses and homes on the opposite side of the road, to top it off, the road has collapsed really scarily. Fire crews are in attendance. As I cautiously jog back home thinking "hey I can grab my phone and take some cool photos of all this", I might go viral! Then I see a white SUV, and 2 guys one of them is going door to door asking for donations, while the homeowner tries to fob the beggar off. I approach valiantly and try intervene because there are bigger things going on than collecting for charity today.

That last one was weird, I had to work out what to say to the beggar, something like "If you are not helping here now, you are part of the problem". I did say my dreams are detailed, what do I make of this? Well I really would like to be able to be helpful in getting rid of unwanted door-knocker types. But that desire to take photos of the disaster, has me reconsidering my motives.

I have had trouble parking at that office park a few times, but what the significance of my friend in the parking dream is, is unclear, because his wife is not disabled, but it was definitely him and his green/aqua coloured Suzuki car, and he is a really capital fellow.

The computer Virus is definitely the angry side of me. We see computer viruses everywhere today, and in many different forms, I've not had virus problems to speak of, so it's definitely about my anger and trying to point fingers as to who allowed the computer to get infected this dream.

True, the dreams mean nothing, but it's nice to imagine that they do. It's far more fun than doomscrolling for half an hour with a cup of tea in one hand.

Discipline=Freedom

" Discipline equals freedom" Jocko Willink.

Last year I started a course to learn strategies and tools for coping with ADHD tendencies. The previous Christmases had been very unhappy times, and I wanted to break, which I did. I have no ADHD diagnosis, I just find the tools help me deal with imposter syndrome, and seasonal depression. I mapped my highs and lows in detail for 2 months last year. I uncovered symptoms which are, as far I can work out, caused by anxieties. Like the FOMO (Fear of missing out) from my last post https://zaphodikusrealm.blogspot.com/2025/01/gently-curious.html .

Anyway, one of the typical ADHD'er tendencies is a desire to optimise everything, and free up "CPU cycles" and so when someone says discipline equals freedom , everybody's brain just melts. That just sounds like a juxtaposition, not a truth. But my next two weeks are about routine establishment. By having routines, you can take guesswork out of small tasks that waste the cognitive and risk assessing part of the brain. We execute about 10 mini risk assessments every single day without knowing, what if you could roll just some of those into a practised routine? What if we could batch chores up, and do it in a way that ensures we don't forget any of them, in itself , that's a stress source. As someone with very little routine, because I am constantly guarding against my OCD tendency, I think I'm achieving a goal. Yes there will be a blog post about goals, I'm working through some of the course material backwards, Can you tell I'm a rebel?

Gently Curious

  If you are a bit ADHD, you will find yourself often getting into trouble with people. I say often and I mean often but for differing reasons, one of them is when a thing someone does just grinds you because it's just inefficient to do it that way.

Big triggers of grumpiness (anxiety) like lack of sleep, stress, technology that glitches, over-loading or even a food change are more general ones that we have some amount of control of. But some you have no control over. Like when a friend takes 20 minutes to eat lunch and you know it takes you 10-15 minutes and the train will be arriving exactly then. It grinds you, if the train runs early, you want to be on it early too dammit! I have always had FOMO (fear of missing out) which means I love to arrive early to every meeting. My FOMO however had started to drive my wife mad. I needed to teach myself to be less anxious about time itself. Last week I twice managed to actually run a few minutes late getting somewhere and a miracle happened, I did not end up driving faster. And I missed out on nothing at all.

Gently Curious

What grinds me, is not just people who eat slowly. I had to realise that my FOMO and wanting to get to every single meeting 5 minutes early was also stressing other people. This works two ways a lot, much more than I had realised. And just like my totally irrational desire to never miss things was not understood by my family, I often don't understand their quirks too. I very often fail to accommodate others, I mean why can't they just do things my way, the better way? Well, that's because everyone has different goals and different things they get out of the habits they might have. So how do I satisfy my unhappiness with the choices of others to do things wrong?

I used to just tell any person straight out, that that is not the best way! And when you turn it in it's head, and instead ask, what they are doing first, then ask why they do it that way, but without asking the why question, ask the how does this activity meet a need, for example how often do we all do "X" in a day for example? Almost in a reflective way, as if you are asking yourself, and then even though you will then learn why they do it the wrong way, and you will not be able to change them, you will understand the person better. Ever since I started being more gently, I have been building my own list of annoying things that I do, which I now work on, to minimise. It goes two ways.