(part 6) there wasn't supposed to be a part 6
🕑 Added 2025-11-15 03:15:57 +0000 UTCI've never been entirely satisfied with the way people talk about dreams.
Oh man, I'm one sentence into this post and the word "dream" has already lost its meaning to me a la jamais vu.
Firstly, the word has two meanings: the hallucinations we experience when sleeping, and the lifelong ambitions we hold close to our hearts.
Conceptually, I do not like this conflation. Those are two different things. Using the same word for them seems almost cynical-- like our hopes and ideals are only fleeting fantasies. Fuck that.
I can't find a solid answer (searching on my phone in bed at 8 am when I can't sleep) as to why that double meaning exists. I was looking into the etymology-- "dream" as in sleep is from Norse drøm or German traum-- but at some point the word also began to be used referring to joy, mirth, merriment. I suspect that is how it began to turn into its second meaning.
"I have a dream--" fake, far off, unreal
"I have a joy--" active, present, emotional.
But then for the times when our hopes and ideals are further away that we would like, perhaps the latter is more inappropriate. Well that still sucks.
But the etymology angle falls apart realizing from various threads that this lack of distinction, the conflation between those ideas under one word, actually exists in a lot of languages, not just English. And not just the romantic languages it's derived from-- for instance, I see a note about Korean having the same issue.
That is interesting to me. What about those two concepts so necessitates the convergent linguistic evolution? This goes from an etymological irritation to a fascination with the human condition.
... And my feelings on it are further complicated by the fact that for me, there Is a lot of overlap.
I used to be much more fascinated with the concept of dreams.
In fact, one of the game projects of my teenage years that went nowhere was explicitly called Oneiro (Greek for dream) and was meant to be a playable collection of various fairy tales overlapped with a series of recurring locations from my dreams. One of those locations instead became the basis for Anna's E4 room. Another is still my go-to for therapeutic "imagine yourself in a calm, safe place" activities.
But even more recently. One of the projects I'm currently working on started because I had a dream, woke up and was like "that was fucking awesome", wrote the whole thing down and started developing it.
And one of the things I've prided myself on was, at a certain balance of wakefulness vs asleep, I felt like there were times that in a dream like state, I could literally step into parts of Starlight's world, walk around them, touch them, and take mental notes of what I needed to develop from that.
... of course I never yet got to doing so. There is the familiar ache when I think of Starlight. Deep breaths... Reset.
It is emblematic of another reservation. Because when I am laying down, whether having just woken up, or especially when going to sleep, my default train of thought leads me to think about what I have yet to do-- things I want to write, areas I want to make, songs for games-- I hear melodies best when I'm on the brink of sleep.
It is not very good for getting to sleep. I will keep myself up for hours because I invariably get too excited (or stressed out, but not usually) to actually drift off.
And yet I'm still too tired to actually get up and do the things. God forbid I have to get up in the morning.
It is in such moods, as now, that I have been writing these posts.
So in that sense, this is successfully serving an important emotional role for me, and I am happy with that.
But setting this recent tactic aside-- the choice I've had to make is that if I want to sleep, I need to stop thinking about development and games. and that helps substantially.
It also, conceptually, sucks and I hate it. That is a large chunk of time that I'm mentally developing and experiencing the game worlds that I'm letting go of.
And I really don't want to let go of it.
This is who I am.
Riposte: no, this is what I do. I am more than what I create. I often have to remind myself my value as a person does not rest solely there. I am a person before I am a Creator.
So I should let go of that habit and prioritize my health.
But I still don't like it. I don't want to. It feels like defeat.
The tempered voice might say, well can't you just set aside some time during the day to focus and be in the same state?
Yes, I can. Kind of. And I try regularly because lately Ive learned sitting alone with my thoughts -is- a great way to let motivation to work bubble up in case I'm lacking it.
But it's a bit like, say you're walking home from somewhere and you pass a store you like to go to. It's a lot easier to just pop into the store on the way home than it is to be home, and have to put on your shoes and jacket again and hike back over to the store you passed earlier anyway.
It feels like a bit of a lose-lose.
I treasure that part of myself that so naturally turns over ideas in her head.
But the ideas are always less in demand than the actual development of them,
So the problem is intractable, and tragically, I do need to sleep
Comments
Alexandre
I very much empathize and see myself in the struggle of an overactive mind around bedtime. And in the struggle of being awake writing or, more likely, thinking at 8am because I can't sleep or haven't slept at all. I don't know that I have much to say or any good tips to give (or really that you are looking for anything like that). I can share that, to me, the two most important things I've learned about dealing with insomnia and sleeplessness from professionals have been the following: (1) Sometimes it is necessary to be honest with oneself that whatever is occupying one's mind at that moment can (and probably should) be dealt with later. (2) Sometimes it is good to realize that some nights there just won't be much sleep and that's not the end of the world. It is okay to decide to get up and go do something productive or simply just nice to pass the time and it is okay to stay in bed thinking or creating (as long as the time isn't spent stressing about how little sleep you're getting). Yes, you'll be super tired tomorrow and it will suck and some days it will suck extra hard, but there's no point just anxiously thinking about how little sleep you're getting or feeling bad for spending the time doing something important, like turning over ideas in your head. I don't know if either thought is particularly applicable to your case, but maybe it is to someone else reading this (and in any case I appreciate the chance to share, I hope it is okay to do so). I do also just want to say I appreciate reading your thoughts on this, especially for the way in which you write them out.
