• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




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    1. The New Apartment (Night of September 8-9, 2012)

      by , 09-15-2012 at 07:13 PM (The Lab Notebook)
      (This is a catch-up post. This dream took place on the night of September 8-9, 2012.)

      Awake, Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

      I'm in my old hometown, on a major east-west street. I have to transport some large, cooked meat dish from one place to another in the trunk of my car, without letting the juices from it spill all over the trunk, so I have to drive very carefully.

      [Later, different dream.] I'm in my apartment in Omaha. My parents are there with me. They've come to visit along with SS [a good friend of my mom's], and we're trying to figure out a more comfortable sleeping situation than cramming both of my parents and SS into my office, which is what we have been doing. We wander into the far side of the apartment, where I don't go very often. We walk through a hallway that goes past an outdoor courtyard, with a brick floor and a stone fireplace, and into the large master suite.

      “I don't come in here very often,” I say. The master suite has a large, unused bedroom and its own bathroom, which solves the problem of sharing bathrooms. We can also move someone into that bedroom.

      A little later, I walk toward the door of my apartment, from the inside, and find that my parents are decorating it for Christmas by putting lights up all around it and putting a green garland over the top of the door, so it hangs down on the inside and the outside. “Mom!” I say indignantly. “I don't put up fall decorations until the autumnal equinox, and I don't put up Christmas decorations until December 1st!” I start taking the decorations down.

      My parents and I are discussing the amount of money we spent on my relocation, and how much I still owe them. They are under the impression that I owe them for the car we rented, but I counter with the argument that no, I don't, because that expense went on my mom's credit card, not mine.

      My friend Jim is in my apartment. He looks very young [younger than he is in real life] and is holding a baby girl. I introduce him to my parents: “Mom, this is my friend Jim. Jim, this is my mom,” and the same with my dad. While I'm doing so, Jim disappears, leaving only the baby floating in midair.
      [I have no idea how I didn't realize I was dreaming. I did take note of how strange it was that Jim looked younger than he normally did, though.]

      ---------------------------
      Side notes:
      This is the first time I've dreamed about my new apartment since I moved here, which was 1 month and 9 days ago now. This dream comes as a relief. I was beginning to worry about my mental state. On two previous occasions when I've made a change in my life (when I moved into the rented room and when I got my first smartphone - see my DJ entries from July 24, 2011 and September 4, 2011), only two weeks passed between the date of the change and the date that change was reflected in my dreams. This led me to develop the hypothesis: “Evidently, two weeks is how long it takes for my my unconscious mind to accept something as normal and start incorporating it into my dreams.” This time, it took just over five weeks. Time to adjust my previous hypothesis. Here's the adjusted version: “When my unconscious mind has begun to accept something as normal, it starts incorporating that something into my dreams. The amount of time it takes for that to happen may vary.” On a conscious level, I would agree that it has been much more difficult to adjust to and accept this change than it was to adjust to the other two changes in this data sample. I believe that this accounts for the time discrepancy.

      I recognize several of the other themes in this dream as themes that have been on my mind lately while I'm awake. I frequently think about how my apartment seems very large for just me, so in my dream, my apartment actually was as big as it feels, or even bigger. I really am excited about decorating my own apartment for Christmas, so it makes sense that I would dream about that. Yesterday, when I was shopping, I really did purchase a few Christmas decorations, but I didn't put them up. My policy on putting up decorations is exactly as I said in my dream.

      My best guess as to why Jim was there is that I subconsciously feel guilty that it's been five weeks and I still haven't found or joined a new Toastmasters club yet, because I keep putting it off.