Turning Points and Pavement - Longest Blog Ever!

Current mood: contemplative

So I have a couple days worth of experiences to share. This is sort of out of my typical rendition in this medium but it does seem to follow the more recent trend. Plus it's fun when the time is available.

January 22, 2007: I awoke feeling fairly calm and relaxed. The burdens of the day were still a bit distant and movement came naturally instead of forced. It was nice. And unexpected, you see, for the very dream I was having during the sleeping hours preceding my morning tranquility was quite a different tone... and a VERY powerful, dark tone at that.

A brief summary of the dream: Someone was trying to kill me. I was able to take aways their weapon of choice, effectively stifling there ability to kill me, and in order to prevent further action I felt it best to attempt killing them instead. -- Side note -- I have never had a thought like this before in any dream or waking moment that I can remember. It really seemed like the best alternative to prevent this person from coming back to take my life later -- Anyway... The weapon of choice happened to be a hand-held electric drill. I am not sure how it happened but I started drilling holes in them in various spots of the main trunk of this person's body. I didn't want to outright end their life in some sort of extra painful way so I tentatively kept drilling until it seemed like enough that they would die from it... even if slowly. -- This is all very strange to me too -- Somehow the person wrested control of the drill and escaped my view. This is where the dream gets really tense. Somehow, and I am not sure if it came in a voice or what, I knew that the person was going to live, in spite of their recently accrued flesh wounds, and that they would GET me. I had the distinct feeling it would be very unpleasant and it caused me GREAT anxiety. In another somewhat "lucid" realization during the dream I also came to believe that the situation would not improve if I were to wake up and get out of the dream that way. It was an exceptionally bleak, powerful feeling of despair. I decided to continue life as normal regardless of all this, and even though I could not sense or see this villain in my pursuit, I knew it would not end until I was dead. And yet, when I woke that morning, I felt peaceful and normal, ready for the day ahead.

Now back to reality: I headed into work at an office I currently do work at and did my thing there until lunchtime. Nothing unusual or noteworthy there.

I went to the "Friends of Boyd Winnie Lunch" at Joe's Buffett a bit late. I had a delicious turkey sandwich and some delightful, entertaining conversation with the remaining folks from the crew that were able to make it there also. One highly, trustworthy and particularly knowledgeable friend gave me a brief interpretation of my dream stating that it there is a threat in my life. I am not sure what that threat might be, although I have some speculation I won't go into here, but I find the interpretation to be interesting. I don't really know if it means anything but weird stuff usually intrigues me.

I went back to the office briefly before starting my walk home for the day. I was walking about the time school must have recently let out as there were many junior high aged kids all over the place. My car is broken at the moment so I do a lot of walking and I see a lot of people. I make eye contact with a small percentage of those people, as most of them don't usually look at me when I look at them, and it is uncommon to make any kind of verbal exchange because of that. People are typically a bit too inward, afraid, or distracted to make connections with total strangers on the street. Anyway... I was quite delighted, as I walked, to have a young fellow, maybe 13 years old give or take, actually look up at me, give me a positive wave with his right hand, and a friendly "Hey" or something of the like. He was a fairly normal looking black kid fitting the visual mold for the area.

I was so taken aback by the exchange I almost went back to interview him as to his origin and nature. Who raised such a kid? It really felt out of the ordinary for many, many reasons. It made me feel pretty good that there are still people raising their kids in a positive way in my town. I don't usually see specific evidence contrary to that but there is a big difference between being a good person who has good intentions and being a good person who DOES the good things they are taught.

Dang this is turning into a novel! My apologies to those, like myself, with shorter attention spans when it comes to reading. I doubt I would actually get this far in reading this if I wasn't writing it. No joke. I am pretty sure I write more than I read in life in general.

So further along the trail toward home I made a stop at the DMV to attempt to take care of some really old business. I was delighted to see one of my ping-pong buddies in the waiting area and we chatted and actually enjoyed our normally dismal waste of time before our numbers were called. I got a phone call right when my number was called, I guess, so I confusedly went up to the desk I was assigned to in attempt to figure out what I should do now that I missed my number. The fellow behind the desk, realizing I made a simple mistake, graciously grabbed another number for me so I would not have to go wait in line again. -- My down-note of missing my called number was turned into an up-note of

that fellows kind gesture. -- My up-note was once again reversed once I finally got to my

intended business with the DMV. Holy down-note! I am still pretty miffed about the whole

thing. I won't go into any detail but dang the government is annoying sometimes!

I continued on my way home thinking it would be nice for a little pick-me-up. I stopped at Burger King to get a delicious, medium-size, strawberry shake. This was, however, a ill twist of fate as the shake machine there was currently non-operational. Ah! Two down-notes in a row! Crazy apples I say.

All of this led me to think I should blog about it yesterday but I had too much work to do once I finally got home. There is more to the day I could mention but I already did that in my journal last night. The rest of the night was all pretty good and fun anyway... other than one bite of my burger at J-Box that was strange and hard. But, whatever. Still a good night. Even if I stayed awake entirely too long.

January 23, 2007: I woke a bit undesirably... I did not want to get up that early. Important things called, though, beckoning my responsibility and self-motivation to become someone better than I currently am. I did my morning things and off to the office I went. It was really cold out.

I got to the office with a fresh package of Murrieta cookies to keep me peripherally busy as I did my self-assigned duties for the day. I learned an exceptionally useful, cool function I had formerly been unaware of in a program I use for my work. This made me VERY happy and further excites me about the future of my work and life in general. Pretty cool, eh? So, utilizing this newly found skill-in-utero, I practiced it on one of the projects for my client for the bulk of the time spent at the office before lunch. I think I made good progress on the skill although I am not entirely sure it will be very well utilized in the project at this juncture.

I unexpectedly went to lunch at the mall with a buddy. Unexpected since I was not planning to take a normal lunch break today. I really enjoyed the break though. I am not sure why I bothered even writing about it here.

On my walk home from work I headed to the mall. On the way I found a delightful little flower to take a picture of. It was looking healthy and fresh and I quite enjoyed how much it stood out of it's environment as one of the two or three flowers within the immediate vicinity. I thought I would like to print a few at the mall I liked it so much. I also wanted to test the print quality of the black border printing at the place I like to get my prints done.

I had a nice conversation with the people at the shop while I waited. They were able to get my prints done in a speedy 15 or so minutes and they turned out quite pleasingly good. I should have probably gotten more than five copies. I knew I would be giving them away.

I stopped in at Red Robin to say hi to my old buddies. It was so slow there were only a few people working but it was really nice to get the chance to chat with a couple of them in relative peace. They informed of the employee Christmas party that is to happen tonight and said I should come crash it. I just might if I get the chance.

I wandered over to Office Max to pick up my business card order and a spindle of CD's I needed. I was quite delighted to bump into an old friend who used to work at Red Robin, that I have not seen for about a year or more, and we got to catch up. I might be able to help her find a new job even as she is now looking for something different than Red Robin.

On my way home I made some important calls which I have been putting off without any good reason to do so. I also talked with my Dad for a while and helped him with some various things at home.

While I was walking through an intersection I was almost struck by a car moving about 20 miles an hour or so. The girl was, I assume, blinded by the sun and slid to a sudden stop only a foot or so away from me. I was basically right next to her driver side window when she finally stopped. Luckily I was slightly out of her path because she would have likely nailed me pretty good. I was on the phone with my Dad when it happened and strangely just waived to her and hollered not to worry. It was a pretty intense experience but my heart didn't even really speed up. I was calm and unafraid. It was weird. I just kept on talking to Dad almost like nothing happened.

The experience made me realize something, or perhaps added to something I have recently been pondering extensively, and I formalized it into a few thoughts as I proceeded on my way home.

I made a turning point in life yesterday when I decided not to procrastinate doing things I already know I should be doing. The direction I turned was, in my determination, the most correct direction I could turn as I turned my will and life toward God. I have never turned specifically away from Him but I have long been askew from the direction I already know is the right one. Something I realize is that I will be continually needing to turn myself toward him for the rest of this mortal probation. Even though I think I turned myself completely toward Him I will inevitably lose my focus, find newer perspective of truth, or in some other way lose my course and need to turn myself again... right away! The longer I wait to make the course correction I need to the further away I am from where I need to, and could, be. He has given us time to make these corrections but the devil can easily claim the time we don't make plans for.

So I have been at this lengthy message about an hour and a half. I doubt it really holds that much of substance for the greater portion of it's speculations and recollections. There is, however, excellent truth to behold if the eyes to see it are open. Not a statement of pride but a recognition of the blessings of truth in my life.

I pre-emptively give kudos to any who read everything leading up to this sentence! Well done.

Dream Log: 1-19-07

Current mood: hopeful

It was a very long, semi-epic dream.

Early in the dream it seamed to be set historically in the distant past of the Americas. Before any foreign influence had come to it's shores. This is not entirely correct, however, since it was not explicitly described as such. A feeling similar to that setting was presented in some way. I am not even sure how that is the case or if I am even describing it clearly enough to be understood by anybody but myself.

I was part of a semi-tribal society. I had a semi-dark skin and the overall appearance somewhat similar to a native american. I lived in a house which was quite anachronistically modern, as were all of the houses of my town, not far from a large river which ran against the base of a large cliff over hang. The cliff stood maybe 50 or so feet above the water and was not a sheer drop off but more of a steep incline of roughly 75° or so. Early in the dream I stood on top of the cliff looking out over the river, watching over my town on the opposite side. The day seemed like a late summer afternoon. The ground was mostly a dirt brown color with a bit of grass here and there. Sparsely scattered clusters of medium sized, Washington-style trees and foliage filled it all out.

While I stood on top of the cliff I became aware of a oncoming presense of unwanted foreigners approaching. I do not remember specifically seeing them as they approached but somehow knew they were coming and needed to warn my town. I went back over the river to my town and most, if not all, of the people there were in their houses and difficult to warn, so I think I shouted the warning as I ran back to my family's house. The architecture of the housing somewhat resembled the fictitious architecture found in the XBox game called The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind as did the general layout of the town as a whole. By this time it was getting quite dark out, and my family was sleeping or basically inert as I went into the house to get them so we could flee. It was quiet and dark as I quickly moved through the house starting from the lowest floor and working my way up to the top floor gathering my children.

As I got to the top floor some of the intruders had come to my front door and where about to come into my house. Strangely, it was all still quiet and dark so I directed my children and wife to secretly escape through a door in the back of the house while I dealt with the intruders at the front of the house. I gave them instructions to go to a specific safe place that I would meet up with them later at, and sent them on their way.

The intruders were all white-european with a somewhat viking look to them. They were sort of inept at chasing me. I can't recall exactly what I did with them other than knocking one of them down. I basically kept their attention for as long as I could so my family could distance themselves from danger. I somehow lured them around inside my house then secretly slipped out a different part of the house so I could also escape. Unfortunately I had not gotten very far before the intruders had realized I had left the house and

immediately resumed pursuit. It always seemed to be that there were always two of them throughout this whole dream even though there were conceptually many more that I was not dealing with directly.

They followed me to the other side of town where a pond-sized fountain of water was. I was too fast for them to catch on foot so they decided to go get into some motor vehicles in attempt to catch me. I was quite dismayed at the strangely anachronistic nature of having any kind of motor vehicle at that time and even made notice of it in my thinking during the dream. It seemed like a sort of "lucid dream"-type of thought to have... I remember thinking "those cars seem a little too advanced for this time period... I wonder where they got them?"

As they were speeding toward me I quickly ducked into a small corridor in between to houses at the last moment before they would have struck me with their vehicles. One was driving a car I can not picture at this time, and the other was driving a motorcycle. They spun around to try to continue their pursuit and this time as they where driving by I was able to knock the motorcycle one off his bike. I quickly commandeered the motorcycle for use in my attempted escape.

It was a small, red, mid-late eighties model Honda or the like. I started driving it around on the grass and was having difficulty getting any speed out of it. I felt like I was re-learning how to drive and was trying different techniques as I tried to build up speed to ditch the other guy in the car. I was driving around in between buildings and on the grass so the car could not directly follow me. I was still unable to really make any distance between us since he could drive the car around a building almost as fast as I could drive in-between them.

I eventually made it out to the edge of the town and started down the dirt road leading out of town. There came, from the direction I was headed, another one of the intruders driving another car slowly my direction. The guy in the car behind me was a reasonable distance behind me but was gaining ground since my motorcycle was still slower than his car. The end of my dream came after I had turned off the dirt road to avoid the oncoming intruder and started across a grassy area but I don't remember any of it being very significant or startling... I think I just woke up normally.

There was, as is almost always the case, more to the dream which I can not really recall any more but I think this encapsulates the bulk of it pretty well.

I initially felt like letting this dream go but decided to write it down somewhat spontaneously. Very little of it seems very important to me now, and really doesn't seem like it could even be important to me or anybody in the future, but I enjoyed writing it down non the less.

On a different note...

Life is pretty good. Things have sort of calmed down for me emotionally. I have started the process of learning to forgive myself for being an idiot. I say "started the process" because I can not say that I have actually gotten it figured out, but rather because I realize the need for it and even the comfort that comes by doing it, even for the little things.

I am sort of getting closer to my goal of better sleeping habits. I have cleaned up my bedroom enough to think it seems like a bedroom again... as opposed to a junk-explosion hole filled with the debris of my organizational ineptitude. My finances are sort of shaping up a bit, as my business is sort of falling into a better pattern of consistency. I am learning to find hope again... A key element to reclaiming peace. I am socializing more. Things are better.

I just realized that my list of positive changes is pretty big. And even though they are individually not very seemingly profound I think I should see it all as cause for celebration. Maybe I will throw myself a groovy party when no one is looking. Ya, that sounds like a great idea.

Anyway... this is becoming extraneously long. My bad.

I will likely continue my rambling in my talk during sacrament meeting at church tomorrow. I am expected to fill at least fifteen minutes give or take. Should be quite fun I think.