Happy Birthday to me.

I'm 30.

Feels about the same as....turning any other age.
I really don't know why people make such a big deal about turning a certain age - although I will miss 29. 29 is a nice number.
I seem to have either escaped of sluffed off the societal angst associated with expectations that this age implies. it helps that I have pink hair and everyone still thinks I'm in my twenties (and that I act younger than those who are, heh)

Mostly, I attribute my age contentment with my solemn vow to never grow up because adults have boring lives and don't get toys for christmas.

That said, I had a really messed up night as far as dreams go. It's been a while since I had a vivid dream that continued after fully waking up. This kind of thing is not unheard of for me, by any means, it just hasn't happened in a while. I must say that my dream life often outstrips my waking one as far as excitement goes, thusly why I don't mind devoting 9-10 hours of every day to sleep. (you would too if you had terrible insomnia for years)

I realize, and Mike has told me, that I am wired differently than a lot of people as far as how my sleep/dream life works. I've been able to remember a stupid amount of dreams since I was little - and i'm talking single digits quite possibly as far down as the age of 2 or maybe even 1. I have a memory of being in the backyard, being very very young and having this kite with a bright yellow peep on a black background with a magenta border, and I remember thinking it was the coolest thing. My parents confirmed that I never had such a kite. This, I believe, is the oldest dream I've ever remembered.

I still remember many of my childhood dreams. I always had a lot, they were vivid from the start and I would recount them to my parents. I also had nightmares a lot, unfortunately. My mom taught me how to control my dreams, to either make them end or call for help within them. During my younger years I was also doing things like walking around in my sleep with my eyes open, and apparently dreaming. I know this is true because I would wake up sitting on the edge of my bed with the lights on - even into some of my older years - and not know how I got there. My parents frequently had to tell me to go back to bed when these things happened.

When a person sleeps, there's a sort of paralysis that is supposed to occur to keep the person from acting out their dreams (which could be dangerous). Obviously, this doesn't always work. I also recall a situation that I found highly disturbing involving sleep paralysis when I was little. I woke up...although I don't believe I was "awake" as odd things were happening that shouldn't have...and I was in bed in my room but couldn't move. I heard this sound of breathing. It could have been me, actually, but I thought it was from something outside of me. Something that was coming towards the bed - a white outline of a form. I didn't want to see it and closed my eyes. Except that I could still see the room even though my "eyes" were closed. I felt something sit down on the bed. It was male. it leaned over and kissed me - I got the impression it had a mustache I could feel the scratchy whiskers but couldn't "see" anything. I was terrified at that point. I hoped that I was dreaming and maybe it was my dad checking on me, but I knew better. then this strange triangular face appeared and was floating at the foot of my bed, making this awful discordant music. It took me a couple minutes until I was able to scream and move.

Other things similar to this happened. I recall being sick in bed and then suddenly floating up by the ceiling, another time looking in through my bedroom window at myself sleeping, being "attacked" by my pink blanket in another "awake" state that once again had me screaming, and having other episodes of the "breathing outline" trying to occur - at places other than home - and trying to make it stop before it played out.

I was able to read in dreams - words, numbers, and recall them. I've read entire pages in books, and apparently this is a difficult thing to do for most people as the letters frequently like to change ala Matrix style effects (it really does work that way). That hasn't kept me from pulling gaelic words and other foreign words out of my dreams that i should not know.

I do dream in color primarily, although I have had fuzzy dream experiences where light is low and things are grayish.

I am also a lucid dreamer and I can recall not long ago that I had a full 2 weeks of nothing but lucid dreams. It's not anything I control terrbily well, although I can provoke them at times. The things that tip me off that I'm dreaming are fairly odd. You can go online and find out how to awaken yourself in dreams by watching for certain things to happen that wouldn't in the mundane world. These things should work fine for people with more mundane dreams especially. Mine typically, are anything but. Letters changing seems to be a good clue for me though.

there's this whole topic of "dream abilities" also, that I have seem to have accumulated more of over time. Flying is easy, but I guess not everyone "remembers" how to fly as Mike has told me he's had to. I also learned how to levitate things, change the appearance of surroundings and even myself, but there's some thing I haven't found control over yet.

I love to try and convince other "people" in my dreams that it's only a dream. they don't always seem to quite get it, however some have seemed intrigued. I believe it is possible to "meet" other people in dreams, or share dreams as this has occured with my mom and I before, but it's sometimes hard to tell who is a character (a symbol for part of yourself or someone else) or who is actually there. I think it has a lot to do with the vividness of the dream and how someone responds to you -especially whether or not they are making any sense.

In lucid dreams when I'm trying to stay lucid (not as easy as it seems)I tend to recount personal information about myself to remind me of where I actually am. I can remember quite a lot - mike seems to think that parts of my brain must be active that normally shouldn't be during this state. I've discovered that it is entirely possible to remain in contact with the conscious (awake) mind through the void that exists between dreams (that black space that comes when a dream ends and either leads to another dream or leads to waking up). It is also possible to change a dream scene by...spinning. Literally spinning around in a dream.

Another kind of event that has happened to me is one I definitely know very few people around me have had. I'm not sure what to call it. All I know it is happened to me when I was little, and then again after what seemed like years. If I explained this to a "professional" who studies this kind of thing, they would likely label it an out of body exprience, or astral projection, etc.
Basically, what happens is I go to sleep or take a nap, and I am conscious the ENTIRE time that I am falling asleep. I start feeling heavy, I might see some imagery, but my thoughts are just floating, yet very focused. I know exactly where I am and what position I am in. I have felt buzzing sometimes, or heard strange whirring noises. The most notable thing, however is this weird separation thing that happens. I know what position my body is in, but I can sit up and pull out of it - like they show in tv sitcoms when someone is dreaming- and then move around. Fully conscious. Things are very vivid then, and i've done things like walk through mirrors, change colors of things,floated through the roof and found myself in odd places with giant bugs and strange writing.

Once, when I "sat up", I turned from my bed to look into the mirror next to it, and saw this stupid piece of hair sticking up from off my head. This episode went on for a short time and then when I "came back" still fully conscious, I physically sat up and turned over to look in the mirror....and there's this stupid piece of hair sticking up from off my head.

Gulp.

yeah. Now y'all think I'm right crazy.
But I'm not kidding. Not a bit.

Whatever the case, my life asleep is a wild one. I still talk in my sleep now and then, have weird "awake" dreams where I see people standing next to the bed looking at me, or bugs on the wall, or strange patterns and sometimes hear things. I've figured out a buttload of what my dream symbols mean - and I can tell you that from my research that dream dictionaries cannot tell you what your dreams mean. that's something you have to analyze. I keep a journal, and I do write down important stuff, but if I logged every dream I had we'd have to kill more trees for paper. And I'd get a nasty hand cramp.

is it any wonder where half of my ideas for art come from with all this going on?
I look forward to sleeping - especially now that I can.

Leaving school and being at a low stress job has everything to do with that - but so has getting good earplugs. I've always been a light sleeper and even though I'm still in the habit of taking melatonin, I really think it's the earplugs that have helped me the most.

If you've never had insomnia and you've never had such a dream life as mine, you don't know how utterly painful it can be to be awake and separated from your favorite place. It's liked being locked out of your house when you've dropped the key in a pile of leaves. Never mind the being horrendously tired and upset - the fact that you're awake and can't escape it somehow is even worse.

fortunately, I sleep like nobody's business now. Although, waking up is a bitch. it takes me a good hour or so to function decently. So i wind up typing crazy shit in my blog for that length of time while I try to make sense of the conscious world.

personally, I think levitation would make things much easier.