iDreams

For a while now, I've had occasional dreams that I call "facebook dreams." No, I'm not dreaming about facebook, rather, I am having dreams in which people from distinctly different, separate times or places in my life are featured together. As this never really happened before I had friends who were strangers to each other interacting with comments on my facebook posts, I've assumed that social networking was the prompt for these dreams.

The past week I've experienced a new type of internet inspired dream. Twice. The first time, I dreamt I was reading the blog of a real-life friend (which does in fact exist, and which I did in fact read regularly back when I blogged regularly). The post I read was a complaint about having to interact with annoying people. I was featured, by name, as an example of the type of person she can only manage to talk to when she "has the energy" for me. I was mortified and devastated, especially since I consider this to be one of my better friends in my area. (Even as I retell this dream, I am feeling some of the same negative reactions creeping in ... funny how my subconsciousness knows how to hit a nerve!) It thankfully was a dream in which I became aware that I was dreaming, and felt instant relief in the knowledge that this post was never written in real virtual life.

In my second dream I was reading an email from a woman I work with at Church. She was giving some calendar information, and telling us about some decisions she'd made regarding the auxiliary we serve in, being the president of that organization. The point of interest was that she announced that she'd resigned from the Ward Council. (For my non-LDS readers, the Ward Council is comprised of all of the presidents and leaders in a given congregation. The council meets monthly. One does not resign from this, but is only released with the end of one's calling as a leader.) And that was the big climax of my dream. Stephenie Meyer I clearly am not.

In each of these dreams, I was reading material on my lap-top, most of the dream consisting of text on a screen. The timing of these dreams seems especially odd to me, because I've been on the internet significantly less often in the past year than I had been the two years prior. It makes me wonder why I am dreaming these sorts of behaviors now. Why reading? And why on-line? I don't believe I've ever dreamed about reading novels, and I do that a ton. I am stumped, but it does look as though my dream-self is at last being propelled into the 21st century.

The final frontier? I have yet to dream about a person that I know exclusively on-line. Maybe that is coming. It seems certain it will if I continue dreaming about virtual interactions. I don't know which would impress me more--a dream about blogging with an otherwise un-met fellow blogger, or a dream about meeting such a person in real, non-virtual life. Perhaps time will tell. Until then, sweet dreams ...