My Tricks for Making the Most of Your Sleeping Life.

I'm pretty unique when it comes to my dreams.
I remember tiny details, whole conversations, colours and words that I see in my dreams (people say you can't read words in your dreams or see colours but I think that's bullshit).  I'm pretty sure that I remember just about - if not every - single dream I have.  I remember dreams from 20 years ago.  I remember them in vivid clarity and I can pretty easily interpret them without any hoaky dream dictionaries.
Another pretty cool thing that I can do in my dreams?  Not always, but probably about half the time, I can control everything that happens in my dreams.  I'm usually aware of the fact that I'm dreaming and so can bend the storyline and the characters to my whims.  This comes in especially handy when I'm having a nightmare.

It wasn't always this way - the lucid dreaming.  I always knew that I was different because people are always saying that the harder they try to hang on to their dreams, the foggier they become until they are totally gone, and they don't remember a thing ever again.  This has always been totally foreign to me.  So I began trying to harness the power of my dreams when I was just a kid - because it came so easily to me.
When I first started feeling depressed I had a recurring dream.  I would be standing on top of a building, the sky would be purple, the wind would be blowing hard and I would be staring down to the ground, wanting to jump.  I felt it all, and it felt so real: the very real and terrifying desire to just let go and fall.  Convincing myself in my head that it would take moments and I wouldn't feel a single thing.  I would die before I even hit the ground.  I just have to let go.  Let go.  LET. GO.  And I can't.  I just can't do it.  And I wake up sweating, every single time.  So those dreams kind of let me see inside my head, places my conscious mind wasn't letting me into.  My brain was trying to tell me to get help, and trying to tell me that if I ever gave it a try, I'd chicken my ass out just like dream-me did.  Because I kept having these dreams and nothing ever changed, it didn't take me long to figure out 'okay, this is a dream, I'm going to take the elevator down and go home.  I'll be back tomorrow night.'

When I started getting very interested in my dreams, and wanting to be in control of them, I started keeping a pen and book beside my bed.  Whenever I woke up I would write down every single detail that I could remember from the dreams that I had the night before (there would be probably 8 or so that I would recall from the night before).  After writing them all down, I would read them all, and as I read them I would envision exactly what happened in the dreams, remember smells, colours, words, people, faces, everything.  I could always see the connection between what my sub-conscious was trying to communicate to my conscious mind, and it hasn't really done a whole lot for me except provide me with some extra gift for introspection.  At any rate, after a while I began to realize when I was dreaming.  I would just get a feeling, and suddenly I was able to change subtle details.  I could never, and still can't, change my dream completely or make myself have a new one.  For instance, if I'm having a nightmare I can't make it stop and choose to dream about chocolate fountains and marshmallows, but I can take advantage of my dream.  I can make ladders appear for convenient escape routes.  I can make a gun appear in my hand.  I can even choose to wake myself up.  I've been toying with this fun little ability of mine for years, and it's one of the reasons I love being in bed so much.  It's downright entertaining to be in my head when I'm sleeping.

And I think anyone can train their sub-conscious minds in the same way.  Dream experts recommend writing down everything you remember from your dreams as soon as you wake up in order to stretch the muscle in your brain that enables you to recall subconscious... stuff.  Maybe keep a dream dictionary handy, if you can't piece together the meanings easily on your own, and gradually you will be able to recall your dreams easily, and for the long-term.  I don't know how long it takes to master the skill, but I know it can be done.
As for lucid dreaming, when you're drifting off to sleep, try your best to concentrate on what you're doing and what's happening to your body.  Focus on the feeling of drifting away to sleep and in the back of your mind you will know when you are dreaming.  When you start to know that you are dreaming, you just have to try to control whatever small details in your dreams that you can.  Start small that way and one day you may be able to enjoy sleeping as much as I do.  I enjoy it quite a bit.

Here's a fun bit about lucid dreaming:

Blow Jobs. Yes. Blow Jobs.

Warning: this post is about blow jobs so if you don't want to hear about it, don't say I didn't warn you.  Dirty blow job literature ahead.  

I don't like blow jobs.  I don't know who came up with this disturbing sexual act, but fuck them because I really really really hate blow jobs.

Every once in a while, there will be a discussion about blow jobs.  Get a bunch of girls together and feed them vodka and inevitably, someone will bring up blow jobs.  Someone like me will admit to hating it, and liken 10 minutes of it to Chinese water torture.  THEN - and I cannot tell you how many times this exact scenario has played out - some bitch will say "Oh I just love giving my boyfriend blow jobs.  I could just suck his dick all day long, bla bla bla"
WHAT?  Are you fucking kidding me?
Jesus.
This must be the girl who every boyfriend I've ever had has compared me to.  "My ex used to give me blow jobs all the time.  She said she loved doing it" and I would usually counter with something like "she's a fucking liar and if you were with her long enough I guarantee that bullshit would not have lasted."
But sure enough.  Apparently you women do exist.  And you are ruining it for everybody else because you're running around like a porn star, loving to have penises in your mouth all day every day.  And loving your chin getting all scratched up by foul-smelling pubic hair and even swallowing, and pretending (and this I know you're pretending) that it tastes like fucking haagen dazs.  Screw you.

Sure.  We've all fallen in love before and have been blindingly suckered (pun intended) into that first blow job.  My mom reads this, by the way.  Hi mom.  But once you do that one teensy little favour he expects it on a regular basis and when you refuse he will bring up that one time when you seemed "really into it" and you will wish that you took my advice.  So please, take my advice.  On your first date, just squash it from the get-go and if he doesn't call you ever again, then you will have avoided a potentially painful courtship.  It's better to weed them out from the very beginning.  If a man expects you to enjoy giving him a blow job, I say blow him off.  Hahaha.. sigh.

But in all fairness, we do all kinds of unpleasant things for the people we love.  And maybe oral sex is just a part of that.  At the very least, make sure he does the dishes or something so you can even the score.

The Bloggers

I think it takes a special kind of person to create a place on the internet where anybody can go and learn about their lives, or judge them.
These are who we are, as writers, and we have to own it.
So when confronted with something that I've written, even if it was probably a stupid thing to write to begin with, I have to smile and say "yep, that's how it seemed to me".  And people will form all kinds of opinions and say all kinds of awful things about us but none of that matters.  We have to own it.
Just like any book will be read by different people, and they will all have read it in their own way, and formed their own opinions, this is also how it goes with our blogs.  And if we love to write and if people can relate to us and enjoy reading it, then we can't let the spotlight scare us from doing what we love to do.

Some of the strongest bloggers out there are mothers.  And they get all kinds of hate mail because strangers like to think that they can judge what kind of parent you are by whatever you write.  But anybody who is actually a mother can relate to almost everything that a 'mommyblogger' posts, and that's what makes them so uncompromisingly  popular with moms and readers all over the world, and it is what enables them to literally make a living through their blogs.

So who cares what those hate mailers write?
Well, no matter where it comes from or what it says, when your parenting skills are criticized you will get angry, as a mother.  But it's important to know that no one can get an accurate, full idea of the person you truly are just by reading a few paragraphs in a blog that you update every few days or so.

Anyway, in the spirit of dealing with blog-reader hatred, I have posted some of the most incredible blogs I have ever come across, written by people who just OWN IT and who have risen to internet fame as a result of their resilience and strength.

Dooce
Finslippy
No Ordinary Rollercoaster
Hyperbole and a Half
Bitchin Aint Easy

To every blogger who tells it like it is, who shares their thoughts and lives with complete strangers (who sometimes turn out to be maniacal idiots), and who stand their ground in the name of what they love to do, I salute you.

The "if tom cruise were in charge i would be dead by now" vitamin!!

When you're as highly medicated as I am, you really don't expect to be in bad moods often. After all, hundreds of dollars in prescriptions every year has got to pay for something, right? But not so. Every once in a while I still get down in the dumps for no reason at all. (I said down in the dumps. That's not normal).

note: I just put George Michael's Praying for Time on. It's mood music. It's important to create an atmosphere when you are wallowing.

I don't know how it happens. Everything will be just fine, I'll be sitting there sipping my tea, totally unawares. I don't feel like I'm in a bad mood. But then! Something will come over me, like a thick wool blanket of blah. For a few seconds I will feel hopeless and pathetic - something I carried around with me perpetually before discovering Wellbutrin and Celexa. It only lasts a few moments. And in those few moments I am taken back to a place I have actually begun to forget. But it clearly likes to remind me.

So! In the spirit of these moments of darkness that sneak up on me, I am going to give a bit of a tutorial. (Purely satirical.)

Today we are going to discuss making the most of your clinical depression. A step-by-step guide.

If you are on anti-depressants, stop taking them. You will feel awful, and then worse. And then you'll feel like a dead person. This is all part of the process.

The first thing you need to do is completely isolate yourself. Stop checking your e-mail, ignore all your phone calls, come up with reasons to start hating your friends. A few good reasons to start hating your friends might include the following: they are kind of assholes. They don't worship your child, the heartless fucks. They don't buy you enough presents. They don't cuddle. Et cetera.

Don't blog, don't keep a journal, don't talk about your feelings; whatever you do, you have to keep it inside to fester like a rotten piece of flesh. Don't have any friends, you say? Good. You're already half way there.

The next step - and possibly the most imperative of all steps - drink. Drink a lot. If you're angry at the world, drink whatever makes you black out. For me, the choice has always been Jack. When depression had me in its clutches, Jack would cradle me and make me think of real smart ass comments to say to everyone. Jack would never judge. Whenever I said something particularly vicious, Jack would high-five me. BUT when I am feeling particularly classy I will drink a bottle or two of wine all by myself and I'll wear red lipstick the whole time, while I cry. When I reapply it, I will get it all over my teeth and not give a shit. If I'm feeling like Delta Burke I will drink martinis and send people hate mail while wearing shoulder pads. It really depends on the kind of depression you're experiencing.

The next thing you have to do is start a fight with your spouse. I have found that spending money is a good way to get this one crossed off the list. Buy something totally stupid and frivolous - like meth! Or maybe you could accuse him of not being understanding of your needs, and reduce him to tears. The harder he tries to please you, the more upset you could get. Keep saying "you don't get it!" Sometimes it's nice to spread the misery around. It's not always about you, you know.

Get your hate on at Wal-mart. 99% of the people that shop at Wal-mart are fucking assholes. Everyone except for you and maybe 1 or 2 other people (that's a generous estimation). Find one of those families that are taking up an entire aisle arguing about something stupid, like back-to-school supplies. Get behind them and huff loudly. Tap your foot impatiently. Throw your hands up as if to say "these fucking guys!"; maybe other people in the aisle will identify with you. That will be a welcome human connection. The family will either be rude to you (thereby validating your hate for them) or they will feel like assholes and move (which will make you feel victorious). You see, in these scenarios you really can't lose.

Go home and eat an entire family-sized bag of two-bite brownies. Then call yourself a lard ass and punch yourself in the thighs.

Sleep on the couch, and stay awake waiting for your spouse to get up and beg you to come to bed and cuddle. When you hear him snoring, go into the bedroom and start freaking out because he fell asleep when you were in need. If he says "you said to leave you alone!" just tell him that he doesn't know you at all, because if he did know you at all, he would know that you were playing the opposite game.

That's all the advice I have for now! I hope your wallowing is everything you hope for and more. When it's all over, send apologies to everyone via text message. If they don't forgive you just send them an e-mail calling them fat assholes or something. That will make you feel better.