Weekly Update: 10-16-16 Stress Dreams

an onslaught of waves

tilted roads I cannot drive 

dreams trouble my mind

Even my dreams are filled with anxiety.

It is rare that two of my reoccurring "stress dreams" occur on the same night, but nonetheless, that's what happened. 

In the first, I was attempting to drive a car, but I couldn't seem to control it. I kept missing my turns and forgetting to signal, and I couldn't seem to stop in time. My car kept driving, through red lights, like the brakes had been cut, and all I could do was steer. I tried to make a U-turn, but instead I found myself, much to my panic, headed for the freeway.

As the massive concrete bridge looped down, the road went from straight to tilted at a steep sideward angle, like the sides of a bowl or like a rollercoaster track. It was the kind of road you could only stick to if going at a very high speed. But I was slowing down. Since I couldn't brake, I had to stick out my foot, like a kid on a bicycle. It worked. The car ground to a halt and I burst into tears. There was a passenger in the car who said she'd drive and turned the car around.

Imagine if the camera weren't simply tilted and you had to drive at this angle.

The dream then transitioned to a beach of sorts. It was actually more like a canyon, with two very steep rock walls on either side, and between them was the ocean. I could tell it was the ocean because of the waves.  The waves were moving toward the canyon walls. I was with a mother and daughter and we were walking along the "beach"--a narrow strip of sand between the ocean and the canyon walls. But the waves were coming in more and more aggressively, consuming what little beach there was. We had to climb the canyon walls.

We were perched atop the canyon walls, watching the waves slap the rock and I became more and more uneasy. The mother was calm and the daughter was playing. I wanted to go back, but the problem was that our way back--the beach--had been consumed by water. The tides were consistent. Sometimes the waves would pull back, revealing the beach and we could walk it for a while. But then a huge wave would gather and we would have to climb. Once, I think, I didn't make it and I was suddenly underwater, slammed by a huge wave. 

Waves dreams are some of the scariest.

These sorts of dreams have been reoccurring--the wave one since at least elementary--and they leave me with a lingering sense of anxiety. I call them stress dreams, because they usually signal that I'm feeling overwhelmed. That seems to be the case this week.

I spent all of yesterday working on one assignment for my Tech class. Let me repeat that. ALL of yesterday. (From 9:00 AM to 10:00 PM). One one assignment. (Which you can see here: http://mockingbirdprejudice.weebly.com/lesson-1-lecture.html) And I know what you're thinking, why didn't you work on it sooner. Well, I did! I worked on it for at least an hour on Thursday and at least 3 hours Friday. And this was not some big monthly assignment. We had one week.

Me, at the end of the week.

I've been Beta reading not one, but two novellas. Michelle Knowlden's "Egrets, I've had a Few" is 149 pages and she gave me two weeks to read through it. Sean Hogan's "The Crow Behind the Mirror" is 173 pages and I have one month. And bear in mind that if I see mistakes, I have to try and fix them, because these books are going to be published and I might be one of the last lines of defense between them and paying readers. On Tuesday, I spent upwards of two hours editing one 6-page chapter.

I finished off my 4-day teaching assignment on Monday and Tuesday, but I took the rest of the week off. I felt bad about that, practically hearing my mom scolding me for not making money. I felt really bad because on Wednesday, I didn't get anything done--and by that I mean, I Beta read for a couple hours, researched Counterfeit Diamond for at least 4 hours, and ended the day by re-writing my second chapter of Company.

Yep, research is going well. Have I read anything? Ha, ha, don't make me laugh.

 And that brings me to my poor, neglected writing. I have been steadily brainstorming Counterfeit Diamond for the upcoming National Novel Writing Month and it has been yielding good results. But I've hardly done any work on The Originals and my agent submissions have been dismal and I haven't even looked at Three Floating Coffins.

So, yes, I'm stressed. Stressed, stressed, stressed. Even in my dreams.

Just thought I'd share that with you.