Tag: control

Embedded Plans

A friend asked my wife, “Is Michael always so affable?”

I laughed, of course. The friend was encountering social Michael. He’s affable, but he has a very short half-life.

To her credit, my wife said, “Mostly. He has his moods. He’s okay as long as I don’t disrupt his writing time. Then he turns into a bear, and it’s not Yogi or Boo-Boo.”

My writing day doesn’t begin until about eleven A.M. I walk before my writing session as part of my process. When I’m writing, I target scenes to measure progress, and not word count. I’m frequently able to think about where I left off, and then resume writing it in my mind as I walk. When I get in and sit down, I usually know what I want to write.

This doesn’t always work because the muses have their own plans. I try to be flexible, but it’s a struggle. I like having plans. Plans provide me with structure and illusions of control.

When the muses throw me off with their reveals, I often need to stop to see where they’re taking me. Since my writing time is precious, I’ll frequently go back and edit what I’ve written when that happens. That keeps me engaged in writing while giving my subconscious mind the opportunity to meet with the muses and hash it out. (There’s not actually any hashing out. The muses know where they want to take the story. It’s up to me to do as told. I like to say we’re hashing it out because it gives me the illusion of it being a collaborative effort.)

My writing session only lasts about two and a half hours. Plans are embedded around it, especially walking. Walking is my number one form of exercise, and it helps me process information.

My walking plans change by season. That’s not just spring, summer, autumn, and winter, but the embedded seasons of hot, fucking hot, cold, fucking cold, wet, and smoky.

We’re into the fucking hot season now, defined by jokes like, “Look, the temperature has dipped. It’s ninety-seven.” The forecasted highs range between ninety-nine and one hundred two for the next ten days.

For all the seasons, I break my walking down into bite sized goals. My overall walking goals remain about twenty thousand steps and ten flights. During the FH season, I try to make fifty-five hundred steps before I start writing at eleven. After I write, I then target ninety-one hundred steps. That gives me four miles by three P.M.

After that, plans are flexible and adjusted according to what else the day requires. I frequently end up walking about two and a half miles in the evening, leaving the house about eight forty-five and returning an hour later. Because we live in a hilly area, my flights go up to about sixty one these days. (I can do that during this season because we have more hours of daylight. This doesn’t work as well when it’s cold and dark, so I adjust.)

For all that, they are just plans. They rarely survive reality. In the end, I ride the wave of the day, seizing moments and narrowing my focus as needed.

Okay, today’s therapy is finished. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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The Help Dream

I awoke from this dream scoffing at my subconscious mind. Yes, I saw its point, delivered through a dream, but I wasn’t buying into it. Not yet, at least. Maybe after more thinking…and dreaming.

This dream found me in a large and busy city. My mother, wife, and sister-in-law (my wife’s sister) were with me. We were discussing my writing and selling books. While showing me what they’d done, the female triumvirate was telling me that they’d taken my books’ sections and created covers for each one. As I was looking at the foot-high high stack and what seemed like twenty books about three quarters of an inch thick each, they (I don’t know which, as they were rotating between explanation duties) said, “And then we combined them in one big book.” They showed me how they’d done that. The final cover was a blank, slightly shiny, tin piece.

Ummm.  I wasn’t appreciative. “Why?” I said, trying to look for other words. It wasn’t the sort of help I’d been looking for, and I didn’t know why they’d done it.

‘They’ continued explaining, “That way, people can take them apart and pass the books around.”

“How will that help?” I asked. “They’ll just buy one book, take it apart, and pass pieces around.”

“They’ve already bought two,” one of them said as people going by paused to look at the book.

I was shaking my head about the whole thing as the dream agenda shifted, with a change of scenery. Now located at Mom’s house (not any house that she’s ever lived in, BTW), in the basement, I’d come up with something. I don’t even know what it is now that I’m awake. In the dream, I called it a grill sometimes and a screen sometimes. It looked like a bed’s headboard, but none of us ever called it that. The others in the dream referred to it as a grill. I’d made them and painted them, and then added a saying. I’d done two like this. When I showed it to Mom and the other two, they were pleased and excited, going overboard with their enthusiasm. Could I make more? Of course, and I would.

Then they left me alone. I busied myself with other things. Mom came down to check on me. “You’re not making more sayings, are you?” she said. “We want to be there when you make more sayings.”

It exasperated me because she was hijacking my process and results, even though I’d done it for her (from what I understand). Plus, I preferred working alone. Always have. I was a bit short with her in my response.

Off I went to do other things.  When I returned, Mom proudly announced that they’d been helping. She led me along to show me the result. They’d painted grills that I’d already made. The results looked terrible. The paint was sloppy and incomplete, but had many runs and was too thick in many places.

I was horrified. Yet, I knew that expressing that would hurt her feelings. I said, “Well, thank you, but I think some of that has to be redone.”

She was saying, “I know,” but was meanwhile leading me to where my nieces and nephews were hard at work painting more grills. I felt helpless in the face of such a proud effort to help. My wife and sister-in-law came by, endorsing what was being done while I stood in the middle and wondered how I was going to regain control.

 

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The Control Dreams

Little late posting about this, as I dreamed it on winter solstice. 

It was a simple dream. I was driving one of three vehicles. Other people were driving the other vehicles. One vehicle controlled the others. I wasn’t in that vehicle, so I lacked control. But I wanted it. Lack of experience with the vehicle and ignorance about what was transpiring hampered me.

The cars were impressive. Closed cockpit, but definitely road cars, they were extremely low, powerful, silent and fast. They were also identical. I knew the other two drivers in the dream as people from earlier years of life.

We took off driving. I was third in line. In an interesting twist (maybe interesting only to me), I went from a close, over the shoulder point-of-view in which I saw myself, my controls and the road ahead, to a long, wide shot that featured the three sleek, silver vehicles silently racing along an elevated white highway.

Back in the car’s cockpit, I decided I wanted control. So I took it with by flicking a switch. Now I was the one driving as the other two chaffed about me taking control. But I had it and didn’t relinquish it, and they accepted that after their brief complaints.

That’s essentially the dream, but subsequent activity was interesting. First, I awoke on the day after solstice feeling like a tremendous weight on been removed. I felt lighter, stronger, and more energetic and optimistic.

Two, among several dreams was a repeat of this dream a few nights later. It went almost exactly the same way.

I thought it a good omen for a new year, but then, I’m an optimist. Have a good day.

Cheers

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A NASCAR Dream

It was peculiar.

My Dad, wife, and other family members – none of them ever seen, but heard in the wings of the dream stage – and I were watching a NASCAR race. It was one of the big banked tracks, like Charlotte, Michigan, or Daytona. I lean toward the last as the site. The cars were in roaring packs. It was the race’s mid-stage. Fans know this means the drivers were racing for position, but were mostly finessing the situation and vehicle to make a run at the end. Stock are mostly high-speed endurance races with a final ten-lap shoot-out, especially with the modern tendencies for the cars to wreck on the last, desperate laps. That stops the race and frequently leads to a green-white-checker situation.

I’d driven in with family in a white Chrysler Sebring convertible, with a beige leather interior. The car was parked right there.

Watching the race wasn’t the same as in reality. While watching on a huge screen, I (and everyone else) could virtually walk among the cars as they raced around the track. NASCAR encouraged this technology as a way for fans to get closer. Further, you could design a new paint scheme for the cars as they raced. The drivers and team could then review your scheme while the race was on, and adopt it for the car, again, while the race was on.

That’s what I was doing during the race. ‘My’ driver was a female (and not Danica Patrick). She’d was leading for most of the race, but there was a wreck. She was eliminated, and the race was red-flagged for track clean-up.

My family wanted to leave. The race wasn’t going on, and the one we cheered was no longer in it; why stay? I was working on that paint scheme, though, and didn’t want to quit. I finally surrendered to their heckling. Then Dad wanted me to move the Sebring up. Although we weren’t in a garage, there was a closed garage door. Using a remote control, I moved the car forward, but resisted getting it too close to the garage door. Dad insisted, move it further forward. Irritated, I did, stopping the car with the nose right against the garage door. I then complained to him about it.

That’s all there was. I found interesting symbolism to move after I awoke: a white car, my father as an authority figure, and a female driver, in the lead. All of those seemed like elements of myself. After mulling it over for a while, I took it to mean exciting times were coming (the race) during which I would be pushed to the limit (the car against the garage door) but that it would be fine (my father), and that while I had control, I wouldn’t be in full control.

As if I’m ever in full control, right?

 

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