Tag: distractions

A Hybrid Dream

I called this one a hybrid dream. My ‘anxiety dreams’ often circle around my long-ago military career. Now my psyche has folded some of my civilian occupations into the mix.

This one began with me working with programmers. While they were busy on the daily stuff required for the present, I was focused on a transition planned for several years down the road. We were installing a new ‘smart’ support system. I was creating test scenarios. At one point, I stopped for a break and overheard someone say that the implementation date would be 2032.

2032. My spirit sagged. I’m going to be forced to wait that long for results?

The dream shifted. Now I’m at work in a military command post as I did for years. I’m working alone in the facility, monitoring different systems. While going back to get supplies, I notice a light blue telephone frame room door ajar. After another second, gathering someone is in there, I head back to the console area to call the security police.

The console is a mess. Phones aren’t where I expected them to be. I can’t find a hotline to the SPs. What the hell, there aren’t any hotlines to anywhere. What kind of command post is this? A dream twist causes me to get distracted. I begin cleaning and organizing the command post, cursing it as I do. What the hell is wrong with this organization that they let it get like this?

Going past the blue frame room door, I realized that I’d forgotten about the person in there. Now I see a woman leave that room. Past her is a cot, chair, clothing, and a small camping table. She’s living in there! Now, using a radio, I notify the security police.

They immediately arrive and take her into custody. Then I realize, I’m out of the console area, and I’m locked out. The console area is never supposed to be unmanned. What is wrong with me?

I hasten to get myself back inside. A person who works for me, a female, is just entering, so she let’s me in I hurry to the console. She accompanies me. We’re chatting, and then I remember and tell her, “I’m behind. I didn’t do my shift checklist, inventory the communications security gear, update the log.”

She says, “Wow, you are behind.”

I begin doing those things. Unlocking and opening the communications security safe, house to all the code books and crypto, I find food inside. “What the hell?”

Taking the food out, I stack it neatly. It comes to me that someone else stored the food there but I don’t know their intention. It looks like candy for Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Easter. I organize it and start giving it away.

Dream end.

1

Sunday’s Wandering Thought

Two subjects wander through his mind as he situates himself at the coffee haunt to write. One, it’s raining and holidays are coming. Those conditions always make drivers less attentive and more dangerous. In his two-mile trip to the coffee place, he witnesses two near misses with people in cross walks and another involving cars making turns. Stay alert, he tells himself. Dn’t be one of them.

Two, what’s with the pajamas look? It’s forty degrees F out. Cold rain spits down. It’s leaning toward noon. Yet people of several generations are walking around in sandals with fleece clothes that resembles something worn to bed. And the sandals? Well, the whole ensemble looks like they rolled out of bed and were too lazy to dress and put shoes on. He wonders if they brushed their teeth. Their hair looks uncombed. Well, that’s fashion.

Yeah, he knows, he sounds like a cranky old man.

He knows.

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The Overlooked Dream

A dream found me returning from a trip. As I arrived, I was informed that the performance reviews for a subordinate hadn’t been done for two years. His contract was for two years, and he’d been there for four, so he was threatening to leave, because he had not had a review.

I was pissed and stunned. That’s so unlike me, for one. I immediately started phoning the guy and looking for him while concurrently stalking the bureaucracy to find out why this oversight had taken place. I should have received notices that they were due if I’d somehow overlooked them, right? The company was uninterested in that; they just wanted it fixed.

The subordinate’s shop, a small brick and glass cubicle, was closed, with only night lines on inside. Meanwhile, in parallel, I’d been practicing my baseball for a big game. The news spread through the crowd that we’d won, 2-0, on a last inning home run. I believed that I might have been the one who hit the home run, although the logic behind my dream me completely escapes RL me. Highlights were being shown on television. I watched again and again. Was I the baserunner? No. Was I the one who hit a homer? No. Well, then, who was I? How was I involved? How was this possible.

Wait, wait, wait: dream self realized: I must not have been put into the game.

Big sadness then. But there was not time for that as I was still trying to fix the problem with the subordinate. Management, though, brought me forward to work on other problems, to help other departments and their heads. While I did those, no questions asked, I kept circling back to my issue. But night was coming on. More people were circulating through the crowded open-air work environment. I ended up lost in the crowd.

Dream end.

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A Multi-layered Dream

I began, with many other people, in a domed city. I was on the circular city’s perimeter. Spaced every six feet were covered holes. The covers were hard plastic. Opening one, I discovered water within them. My curiosity was satisfied.

We were aware that storms were going on beyond our city. It didn’t overly concern us. To the north, pieces of a golden city appeared just outside of our domed city. I, like others, stopped to marvel at it. Who built it? How was it built so quickly? Exquisite looking, with multiple levels, it already towered over our domed city. But more was being added. How was that possible?

I went with a handful of others to see more. When I reached our domed city’s northern exits, I could see that the city beyond was a holograph. There was no city, and it was pouring rain. I was baffled; why would anyone create an illusion like that? I wondered about motives and angles.

It dawned on me that we were being distracted from a danger to our domed city. Hurrying back, I returned to roughly where I’d been and pried one white lid from a hole. The water was higher, and churning. I realized, the water is rising. Our city was in danger of being flooded.

I needed to warn others. I started pointing out the holes to others. Directing them to take off the lids, I showed them how the water, now foaming with a faint yellowish tinge, was rising higher and higher. Meanwhile, a young man approached me with a U.S. military-style flight cap. He had a pen and wanted to write on it. I was baffled; why couldn’t he write on it? What did he want written? It was a joke, he explained. He wanted someone to write, ‘I went to command school and all I got was this hat.’

Not much of a joke to me. The hat had two stars on it, signifying it belonged to a major general. Instead of being silver, the stars were gold, however. That puzzled me; silver stars are always used on American insignia. I looked for a name inside the hat: Redmond. I recalled dealing with a Redmond. He’d been buying Dionne Warwick and Friends concert tickets.

The general himself appeared, a short and amiable guy with neat and wavy black hair. I encountered a handful of major generals in my Air Force career. This guy was more affable than any of them. I told him that I had his hat and exposed what the other wanted to do with it. The general thought that was a great joke. I talked about his Dionne Warwick tickets. He remembered wanting to go to the show but didn’t remember buying the tickets nor going. I recounted helping him look for the tickets, having the tickets delivered, and then a conversation with him about going to the concert. He vaguely remembered these things, he answered with a broad grin.

Meanwhile, water was almost boiling out of two of the holes and had become more yellow. I thought the yellowing was a serious sign of something being breached, based on a conversation I’d had with an engineer earlier. We needed to do something. Evacuate the city? Find some way to relieve the flooding? I asked the general for help. He shrugged, replying, “I can’t do anything.” I told him, “Yes, you can, you’re a general, you were a commanding officer. You know how to direct people and coordinate people.”

He said, “But I don’t know what to do.”

I replied, “I’ll tell you what to do then.”

The dream ended.

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Key Crust

As a writer, I’m forced to work from home during the pandemic. It’s not my preferred place. For some reason, the rambunctious noisiness of coffee shops draw out my muse. I think it’s because I’m there for the purpose of writing.

Unlike home. At home, it’s me, my wife, the cats, the phone, and the world outside my house. As with any job, distractions arise at home that interrupt the work flow. For instance, this morning forced me to address a major distraction: what is that stuff between and around the keys on my keyboard, and how do I get rid of it?

I don’t know why. Maybe I’m embarrassed by the key jam (you know, like toe jam?). I don’t know why; nobody sees my laptop and its key jam (key crust?), so why should I be concerned?

But logic doesn’t always drive my thinking. Neither does emotion nor physical input. There seems to be other realms forcing behavior.

I’ve had this HP Envy for six years. I’ve noticed the key crust before. I’ve tried cleaning it off before. Today, as I finished a second page, sipped coffee and addressed what happens next, I stared down at the crust. Resolution filled me: the crust must be removed.

First, though, the HP Envy name amuses me. Nobody has ever expressed envy at my laptop. The name seems like wishful marketing.

I’ve attacked the crust before. Compressed air has been used on previous machines. (My god, I’ve been using and cleaning computer keyboards since 1981, part of me thinks with a little horror.) I also have a little whisk tool. I’ve used these on the Envy, but the crust is impervious. I next employed toothpicks, q-tips, and various other slender pieces of things. None worked.

But now…ho, ho. I purchased an eyeglass repair kit this week. It has a thousand screws. The screws were what I wanted. I already have two sets of eyeglass screwdrivers. Between my wife and I, we have five pairs of glasses that we use that have suffered detached lenses or stems. In each case, a screw had popped out. As the glasses were otherwise fine, we certainly weren’t going to dispose of them. No we needed to repair them.

We’ve both been wearing prescription glasses since our early teens, dutifully going to doctors, get new prescriptions, and then buying new glasses as regularly as full moons. (At least, it seems like that.) We have a basket full of glasses. We often give old prescription glasses to charity so others can use them, but we have sentimental favorites that we can’t abide to surrender. Naturally, these are the afflicted glasses.

Although I’ve had the tiny screwdrivers for two or three lifetimes, they’ve never been at hand when I stared down at the key crust. Since I’d repaired a pair of glasses last night, the screwdriver set was right there beside me.

And the crust was right before me, almost…mocking me.

This had to end.

Selecting the smallest screwdriver, I carefully worked it around and under the keys, appalled and fascinated by the stuff I was recovering. This, I figured, was an amalgam of cat fur, human hair, and dandruff from us both, along with what the hell else, you know?

I had to employ an exact, tender angle. Each key was individually addressed. Rushing was out of the question. After a relatively short time (yeah, I have no idea how long), the key crust was gone, and the keyboard presentable once again. It really looks so much better.

Then, because I’d been at it so long, my coffee was cold, and but a swallow remained, so fresh coffee was required. Also, since I’d been sitting an hour, some quick exercise. Also, since it was lunchtime and breakfast had been four hours ago, lunch. Also, since my wife made some energy balls yesterday, a couple of them wouldn’t be remiss. Also, I hadn’t checked Facebook or emails (there could be something important there, right?). Also, it looks miserable outside (whose truck is on the street? Why are they parked across from my house?), so what’s the temperature? It rained all night – how much rain did we get? (Less than an inch.) How many more days will it rain? Oh, there’s a winter advisory out for snow over four thousand feet. That’ll end tomorry. Well, we’re not going anywhere, anyway – COVID-10, you know.

Finally, though, it was all addressed and out of the way. Now I’ve got fresh coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

Now where the hell was I?

5

Dissecting A Diversion

I was ready to start a new chapter, and went back to where I’d stopped yesterday.

Main character was on a zeppelin. I decided I needed to get him there, so I moved back in time. Yeah, my process is very non-linear. I’d written what I saw the day before, and that meant he was on a zeppelin, taking a trip. Now I needed to get the hero and team there. I decided to pick up the action where he first encountered the zeppelin. I began visualizing that moment. The zepp is tall. How tall? How big? To the Google!

Wikipedia was a bitcoin mine about zeppelins. A company had built some and had been giving tours, but folded. The company was based at Moffett Field. Well, shoot, used to live there!

I needed technical information on the zeppelin. How many engines did it have? What’s its payload, crew size, etc. Remembering my time on Moffett, I recalled the U.S.S. Akron. Well, let me search and read.

From the Akron, I went to the Macon, and on through the history of German, British, and U.S. military and civilian zeppelins, designs, and disasters. Nevil Shute helped design R100 and R101 for the British military. A side path was followed to a summary about his autobiography, Slide Rule. Clicks uncovered information about hybrid air vehicles (HAV), dynastats, rotastats,  Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle (LEMV), the Airlander 10, and the Flying Bum.

This novel is set in a future dystopia so I needed to wrap my head around how HAVs may progress from now to then. Then, what limitations would be encountered, and how they would address those.

Hours had elapsed. I’d taken bathroom breaks, replenished fluids, and stretched and walked around. I hadn’t written, although I’d collected a stack of information as building materials. It was almost four by then, so…well, I needed a break. I’d do a Sudoku, and then write. But, by the time I finished the puzzle fifteen minutes later, well…I went on to my jigsaw puzzle in progress.

And that is how a novel doesn’t get written.

Got my coffee. Time to try to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Crumbs

Crumbs populated his keyboard, slipping between the keys, forcing him to ponder, what did I eat and when did I eat it?

That made him hungry. He attempted to pick some crumbs up for closer examination, and perhaps to taste — just for investigative reasons, of course (that one looked like it may have come off a chocolate-chip cookie) (when did he eat a chocolate chip cookie?) -but the crumbs fled his efforts like kittens scattering at a noise, undermining his investigative process.

It did promote a greater appetite (if he trusted the messages that his stomach was issuing). Nothing healthy was offered for sale here, and he didn’t want to leave to eat somewhere else. Therefore, his logic forced him into a less healthy choice, which turned out to be a raspberry scone.

It was just a one-time deal, he told himself, so it would do no lasting harm.

He blamed it on the crumbs.

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