Off to a good start

I’ve been diverting a lot of my time and energy to working on my novel lately. I had thought, around Christmas, that I would commit to posting every day in the new year, as a way of honouring my faithfulness to writing. But then it dawned on me that my novel draft was written, and I got excited to type and revise it. And then I found out there was a novel writing contest whose deadline was yesterday, and I got excited to prepare a submission. And then I submitted, and got excited about typing and revising again.

I’ve still had lots of ideas emerge that I’d like to post about, but the novel train simply has more momentum right now. As much as I love click-clacking my words into this particular box, I don’t have any notion of where, in particular, it could take me. Meanwhile, my novel, I think, may have legs, and a destination in mind.

Immersing myself in writing in the way I have been these past few weeks has been an exaltation. At a level rivalled only by one other point of light in my life.

It’s a relief to find that exaltation in an activity that is not tied to somebody else. To be free to indulge in the majesty of it – the divinity of it – without worrying it creates a burden upon another. To be able to fully invest myself in the power of it, not needing to hold back for anybody’s sake. I have been waiting for this for a long time. Yet it was right there all along. Glaringly obvious, surely, to anyone with half a brain cell.

It gives me hope that there are other forms of exaltation waiting for me. Forms that will open and welcome me, inviting me to give myself to them in reckless abandon. It gives me hope that my life will, in fact, deliver to me all the things I have been dreaming of.

That is quite an incredible feat, and not something I expected in the first half of January 2022. But there we are.

Tim

I have recurring dreams about being in a romantic relationship with Tim Ferriss. This is not by choice, but it is my reality nonetheless. While I’m not attracted to Tim Ferriss, I do like and admire the version of him I have been exposed to, and so I suppose that accounts for some of it. But he’s, not like, you know, Guy Martin. Or David Tennant. Or Sufjan Stevens. He’s not even Jason Mraz or Elon Musk. He doesn’t capture my fascination or make me giddy with joy. He’s just a very steady, positive, peripheral presence. Somewhere between Andrew Huberman and Seth Godin. I’m just having fun listing people now.

They’re not sex dreams about Tim Ferriss, exactly, although there is sex; they’re specifically about having, developing, maintaining a romantic relationship with Tim Ferriss. I don’t recall ever having that kind of dream about anyone else. Only Tim. Always Tim.

That’s all. No conclusions. Just thought you should know.

Nola

Motherhood, for me, was a calling that revealed itself in early adulthood. Prior to that, I was somewhat ambivalent to the idea, primarily because I doubted my ability to be a good mother. That didn’t stop me from constructing a very specific fantasy of living on a smallholding in Grizedale in the Lake District, with my two sons Jacoby and Delano (father pending), but I was very distinctly disconnected from any concept of what it would mean to be a mother.

When I was twenty-three, however, my perspective jumped quite suddenly when I had a strange dream. It was all blackness, and out of the blackness stepped an old man. He handed me a baby girl, told me her name was Nola, and said “remember, she’s not yours.” And then I woke up. It felt important, and I found myself reflecting on its meaning for a long time after it ended; on what it is to be a parent and raise a child; on what preconceptions I had been carrying with me in my life thus far; on what would happen if (or maybe when) Nola was made manifest; on how parenthood now seemed inevitable for me.

A few weeks later, I fell pregnant. I wasn’t using birth control but I was tracking my cycle and should have been a good week away from ovulating. There was a moment during sex that I suddenly knew, but I told myself I was crazy until a little pink line corroborated my story. It was Nola. The world was magical.

The first flush of joy, however, gave way to a sort of desperate depression after not too long. I wasn’t ready to give a child what they deserved. My partner wasn’t ready to give a child what they deserved. At about eight weeks, I felt my connection to Nola waning, completely outside of my control. I felt her slipping away. I blamed the depression I couldn’t snap myself out of, and the fact that my relationship had declined to the point we were sleeping in separate bedrooms. But I couldn’t shake the sad suspicion that it was over. At twelve weeks it was confirmed I had miscarried, although my body refused to give up on being pregnant.

I had failed. I had failed her. I wasn’t good enough to be a parent.

One day, though, I would be good enough. One day, I would be ready to give a child what they deserved. I had to be. And this was, for whatever reason, part of the journey to get there.

I won’t comment on whether that was a healthy meaning to take from the experience; it was simply the one I took.

Three years later, my body, my mind, my soul were insisting it was time to have a child. To the extent that, a few times, despite the fact I hadn’t had sex in probably a year, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d peed on a stick and it told me I was pregnant.

Then I met someone. Someone who liked the moon that my cycle had now synced up with. Things got a little bit reckless from there.

Interpretations

I’ve been having a lot of dreams lately. Well we always have a lot of dreams. I’ve been remembering a lot of dreams lately. Vivid ones, with what seems like highly symbolic imagery. Tidal waves and jungle cats and shiny gold coins. Gargantuan cruise ships with underwater viewing windows. Poos on my doorstep.

Polaris even showed up, sitting ostentatiously on some stone steps to demonstrate that, no, in fact he is not a nebulous mass to me as previously suggested; my brain actually has a startlingly high definition idea of his person. The person I have only ever seen in a very limited number of two dimensional images several years ago. Like, I had a dream about Guy Martin too, obviously, but my brain didn’t have the audacity to pretend dream Guy Martin actually resembled real Guy Martin. But with Polaris, my brain is like, nah this is it, fucking exactly this, absolutely nailed it, no fucking doubt, more real than anything you’ve ever seen. Yeah, well, I appreciate the effort, I really do, but you gave him, like, the opposite of a monk’s haircut, so I’m not sure if you’re suggesting his hairline has receded uniformly around its entire edge or that his wig shrank in the wash, but I think at least something was a little off in your estimation there.

I really enjoy dreams. I get too enthusiastic about telling them as stories to people and I like to ponder their meaning. Sometimes (often) I look up dream meanings on the internet. The problem is most of the things I want to look up the meaning of are just not things that anyone would have thought to posit a meaning for.

Like okay, I can look up tidal waves. But what if the tidal wave from the ocean is met with an equal and opposite tidal wave of sand from the desert, and neither of the waves ever crash because they just reactively match each other’s force and height?

And I can look up ‘the jungle’, and there’s even mention of big scary jungle dream cats, but what if while I’m strolling through the jungle with a bunch of people from the giant cruise ship, I am casually met by a large leap of clouded leopards (I looked up the collective noun) and they rub up against me like friendly house cats and that’s how I know we’ve reached our destination?

And, yeah, there are some dream poop meanings to consider…but what if I’m coming home to a house that isn’t mine but does exist but isn’t relevant or notable in any way and my son greets me because apparently I just left him home alone I guess and he informs me that he did a poo on daddy’s bed which isn’t in this house but for some reason I know is made entirely of light brown leather but there is also a poo on the doorstep right in front of me but it looks more like an expertly piped soft whip chocolate ice-cream?

These are the questions I need answers to.

Sounded goaty

I’ve been awake since 3:33am, after waking inexplicably from a dream about my ex where he required my reassurance that being attracted to a person who may not identify as a traditional gender wasn’t ‘weird’. Which is interesting, considering neither of us are particularly gender conforming individuals, but during our relationship we somehow got sucked into playing out really toxic, extreme traditional gender roles. Lots to think about, lots to think about.

But the closing scene of the dream was where the object of my ex’s befuddled affection was saying goodbye to him, and no-one was sure whether they were gonna go in for the kiss. I, as the sole onlooker, was both curious and uncomfortable, and thus unsure where to direct my gaze. Out of the corner of my eye I saw they were, in fact, going in for the kiss, and quite assertively at that. Somewhat taken aback, my ex seemed to lean away uncertainly and then, as the kiss continued, he let out a bizarre comedic noise that seemed to be an involuntary release of tension. Then the person left, and after a few seconds my ex said “sounded goaty”, and the person, who we both thought was well out of earshot, said “yeah. It did.”

And every time I think about it now I burst out laughing.