Good Brain; Good Brain: Kudos For Leaving The Made-Up Drama In Our Dream World

I slept in today. Until noon. I had set the alarm but I got up, turned it off, and went back to bed. The good old trick of leaving the radio on had little effect. Oops.

The sleep-in was long overdue but also a little restless. I had another crazy dream. I was battling and being chased by one, two, or a few quasi-super-villain type characters for most of the night. They couldn’t defeat me but had enough of an advantage that I was always on the run. I also had the feeling they weren’t all bad either. They were probably enemies of circumstance and not motivated by any deep-seated animosity — like Magneto and Professor Xavier.

So, on and on it went, the bad guys would come very close to defeating me but I would somehow escape or the scene would re-set and I would be high-tailing it just out of reach. You know how dreams are.

And then something very evil arrived on the scene. I never saw it but I knew it was massive, evil, and incontestably powerful. I knew this because, as soon as the thing arrived on the scene, the people chasing me immediately turned their attention to it and were destroyed almost instantly somewhere off camera in a moment that would have pleased an Alien-era Ridely Scott. The associated sound affects and peripheral gore was impressive.

It was at this point my conscious mind intervened. It was not at all interested in seeing what this creature would do to me and it woke me up and it woke me up fast. No attempted blow-job conversions on this evil demon. Too risky, I guess.

Now, it seems to me that this is a pretty straightforward stress / worry dream. The only shortcoming with that analysis is that I am not worrying or stressed about anything right now. I have plenty of food, water, shelter, good friends and romance. I am pretty much doing exactly what I want and achieving modest success doing it. Yes, I am planning for the future but it is all positive strategic planning. It’s not like, “O I am worried what will happen next”; instead, it is like, “when and how will I achieve my objectives.” I’ve come a long way from the anxious adolescent I once was.

So, I wonder if the brain, which evolved in a mostly hostile environment, needs to make shit up to meet its “Danger Will Robinson” quota. Perhaps, it is so used to crap happening, in the absence of crap happening, it simply needs to invent crap to be stressed about. Fortunately, my brain seems content to do it at night. Good brain; good brain.

In other news, last night, I had my first proper show with the lads from Insensitivity Training. I’ve been workshopping with them for a couple of months in order to flex the much underused Improv comedy muscle. It went well, much fun was had, and the audience seemed to enjoy themselves.

Ray, Dawson, and I have made good progress re-shaping G-Men Defectives into a lean, mean seat-filling machine. Fear not G-Men fans, none of the original zaniness has been touched but some structural changes have been made to sharpen and clarify the narrative flow. We’ve got the final shape now and it is time to get off-book. Speaking of which, that is what I should be doing.

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