nightdog_barks | (no subject)

Cold, but at least it's (hazily) sunny. Currently 31 degrees (-.6 Celsius), but with the wind chill it feels like it's 21 (-6.1). I stepped out earlier this morning to refill the thistle socks and the dried corn cobs, and by the time I was finished my hands felt like they were burning.

Had an anxiety dream last night in which I was on a college campus and was told I could no longer attend said college because I hadn't been going to any of the classes. Which ... I didn't know about? The classes, that is. I was worrying because apparently I was all alone in this dream world and would now have to find a job, and I couldn't think of any jobs that might hire a 60-year-old woman with chronic health issues. I was still kind of sad and annoyed (sannoyed?) when I woke up.

Anyway, on a much better note, here is a link to a nice long read by Rebecca Solnit, on libraries and childhood -- In Praise of Libraries and the Forests That Surround Them. A very small excerpt:

The child I once was read constantly and hardly spoke, because she was ambivalent about the merits of communication, about the risks of being mocked or punished or exposed. The idea of being understood and encouraged, of recognizing herself in another, of affirmation, had hardly occurred to her and neither had the idea that she had something to give others. So she read, taking in words in huge quantities, a children’s and then an adult’s novel a day for many years, seven books a week or so, gorging on books, fasting on speech, carrying piles of books home from the library.

Yep. That was me. :D

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The part of your anxiety dream which featured missing classes because you didn't know about them is actually *very* common among anyone who has been through post-secondary education I suspect, and time elapsed since leaving education behind doesn't seem to count. I've certainly had dreams where I suddenly had exams for classes that I didn't know about, or dreamed of failing classes for non-attendance. There also seems to be something odd going about where multiple people over the last week or so have had (and shared) unsettling dreams.

I almost never remember my dreams, for example, and had an anxiety dream last week. I dreamed I was living in my mother's house (and she was much younger than she is now, but I seemed to be my current age). She was angry with me and short in general, and very irritated by the dogs, and I was convinced she was going to throw me out and that I would have no where to go. I actually thought in the dream "... Maybe I could by a house?" and there was this odd lacunae as if it wasn't possible for some reason, and it was as if I had no job and no resources. The dream went on with her being irritated with me, and then I woke up in my own bed, in the house I own, shortly before I was due to wake in any case to go to work. I was baffled, and mentioned the dream to Minion, who told me that she'd been having such unpleasant anxiety dreams lately that it was a relief to wake up. It's not much consolation, but you are far from alone in having inexplicable dreams.

Yep, I've had the missing classes dream before, and also the Surprise Exam In a Class I've Completely Forgotten About dream. Plus there's the Surprise Work Project That's Suddenly Due dream, and the Place That Should Be There But Isn't dream, and let's not leave out the I Forgot to Feed the Hamster and Now It's Dead dream, which THANKFULLY I have not had in a very long time. OH OH AND HOW COULD I FORGET THE CLASSIC I'M BEING CHASED BY AN ELDRITCH HORROR FROM BEYOND ETERNITY AND IT'S LIKE I'M STRUGGLING THROUGH QUICKSAND DREAM? :DDD

That is interesting about a surge in anxiety dreams! I did read somewhere recently that more anti-anxiety drugs are being prescribed ...

A classic anxiety dream for me (with the caveat that I'll have two or three and then nothing for at least a year) is the "I'm in a strange place with some colleagues to do something important and I get separated from them and lost, and the place is a) very crowded full of hostile people and b) a maze of twisted junk and garbage in an urban landscape that morphs and changes so that the way back closes after I pass through it". For some people being lost in the wilderness alone would be an anxiety dream, not for me. Chaotic crowds and piles of garbage are evidently are my mental symbolism for anxiety inducing things. The "being mortified in front of colleagues" is also there and it's a much smaller component.

These are anxious times we're living in, I relate to both. And kind of living it. 57, separated, new in town, looking for work. Nothing to worry about!

EXACTLY! NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT NOTHING AT ALL

:D

And ye gods, yes. Anxious times. Ugh.