Dream that persists throughout the Day.

Today was not as productive as I would have liked, but I did manage to get some things done at work, as well as try to assist my family in feeling better about their personal troubles. I still need to mail some important letters, but I will get that done tomorrow.

The most interesting part of my day was the nap I had this morning. I have been feeling especially out of energy lately. My night routine isn't much of a routine at all. Aside from being below perfect health, I go to bed at irregular times, so it is often that I wake up at a good time, between 5:00 and 7:00 am, but I wind up falling back asleep around 8:00 or 9:00 am. This was one of those mornings. It was during this extra sleep between 8:00 and 11:00 am that I had a dream that I was working in some non-teaching capacity at a school, perhaps I was even attending some college level class there. It was while I was in the auditorium, helping to clean up or assist with the other younger students that I met the most beautiful and vivacious teacher. Her dark auburn hair and lovely figure was not the most intriguing thing about her. The most intriguing thing was that she seemed to be genuinely interested in me as a potential romantic partner. She wanted to go on a date, not as a way to fill an emotional need of hers or to play out some predefined cultural role that dictated how she should find a partner. It was a genuine interest in me as a person. I remember feeling disoriented by it. I could be a confident person in almost any other scenario except this one. I was pleasantly surprised, uncomfortable, and slightly incredulous and suspicious.

It was this dream that hung with me all day more than anything. More than my sister's complaints about her life's struggles. More than the work that I needed to do. More than the television shows I distracted myself with. And more than the chores I did before going to bed. I am not sure why these internal journeys of the inward spirit take so much precedence over the more tangible ones of the outward being, yet in this case, it did.

Personal Goals for Improvement

I need to spend a little more time reading classic literature. It has a mysterious quality that helps inspire and invigorate my internal life just a little more. For example, just before going to bed, I read the first chapter of Madame Bovary by Gustav Flaubert, and the richness of the translation was—how else can I put it?—savory. When I first discovered some of this classic literature in college, my experiences were a bit limited just because I had not yet experienced many of the classic troubles that refines a person's character. While youth has its many advantages, age brings sorrows and sorrows bring wisdom and understanding. (Of course, as no one is omniscient, that particular wisdom and understanding that age brings is necessarily confined to each individual's vision and personal perspective.) As I grow older, my own perspective on the text gains a lot of this depth.

Today, I plan to take care of some personal tasks I have been putting off. I need to mail some letters, and I should make a trip into the larger city to look for clothing. It would probably help me greatly to make a list of the various tasks I need to complete, as well as figure out a weekly plan for achieving my goals. Spring seems like a good season to do this. The trouble for me is that I sometimes get so bogged down in the plans, or making plans for plans, that I never get anything started. It has helped me to have a personal pad of paper that is not a "journal" or some kind of sketch book with refined art in it. I tend to treat those things with too much trepidation, as if they themselves were the final pieces, and not a workbook that ideas should spill onto in a chaotic mess.

To clarify some of my goals for myself, I should read each day to be a better writer. I should draw each day to be a better artist and visual thinker. I should work on mastering wordpress development so I can have more flexibility with my blogging/writing. I should learn more about computers and networking in general, web design and development, and coding in other languages. This is as good a place as any to explore some of my plans for myself.

Trapped inside the Emotions.

It's nearly been a year since I last wrote something here, and the previous post (after having just read it) is something I really could have written yesterday. The feelings, those pent up emotions that stagger around in my head and crash into each other from day to day, are still the same. Nothing has changed. Nothing.

And, that means, I've really haven't made progress. In fact, in some ways, I feel worse now then I did before. (Of course, there is the chance that I can't be objective enough to see the progress. Yet, looking at it from just the surface, I am a little stunned at how much of what I have written then is the same now: I still feel like I need to improve in all of the major and minor ways I mentioned. Even the bit about "motivation following practice" is something I thought the other day, and until this moment, believed it was an idea I had only just discovered.) Reading, I see a foolish person that year ago, whining about needing to be better and not really understanding how much worse it could be. I need to forgive myself, they say. I need to not be so hard on myself. However, looking on all of my internals in a way that those friends and my family cannot, I see the pain and the failures more closely. Worse, I know how much I could have achieved, but through laziness, fear, and ignorance, see how much has escaped me. I will return to a better life (with more challenges) soon, and I will attempt, yet again, to overcome my failures.