Some thoughts on sleep and dreams

Not talking about my LitRPG trilogy. I’m the sort who lays down and ten seconds later is unconscious; thanks to the Army, I can sleep almost anywhere, and I go deep and stay there, so I dream a lot, and vividly.

Now, I do not believe that dreams are anything but parts of your brain playing solitaire while the rest of the system is down for scheduled maintenance. That said, I always reflect on my dreams when I get up, because you never know what can pop up.

I believe that the keenness of Human senses and the brain’s ability to store data is greater than most people’s ability to process or recover data, and that this is the source of ‘gut feelings’, ‘instinct’, and the like. I have always trusted those feelings, and they have never led me astray.

So while I don’t place great stock in dreams, I reflect on them because I find that they are often related to topics that have been on my mind. And a topic I often have in my mental In Box is my current project. For example, last Friday I resolved plot issues to two projects while dreaming about inheriting a restaurant in a strip mall.

Why I was dreaming about inheriting a restaurant in a strip mall, I have no idea, although it might be related to my favorite local Chinese restaurant (which was in a strip mall) recently getting closed down because of yet another Human trafficking charge. I am still in recovery on that issue.

The key point is that while the dream ran its nonsensical course, I picked up those aforementioned points.

Some years ago I got the core plot for the novel Buffalo Riders from a dream.

So my point is, give your dreams the once-over after awakening, especially if you are involved in creative endeavors. You never know what bit might pop up.