Dreamland


Home Dream Types What I Dream 1969 Dream Diary 1984 Dream Diary Recent Dreams

What are dreams? I doubt that anyone knows for sure, but they have fascinated me since I was a small child. When I was a teen I did a lot of reading on the subject and used to entertain quite a few strong opinions about dreams, most of which I now have discarded or at least hold suspect. Perhaps the theory about them that made the most sense was that I believed they were the subconscious mind’s attempt to communicate with the conscious. But given that many dreams make no apparent sense and that many people rarely remember what they dream, that seems a rather tenuous position to me today. At one point in my life I did a lot of research into dream interpretation and engaged in quite a bit of it for a while, but I now believe that much of what I “interpreted” from dreams (my own and other people’s) was, in terms of reliability, of the nature of so-called personality tests that abound today: The results can seem to fit virtually anyone at varying times in their lives. Then too, some of my interpretations proved entirely erroneous and inapplicable, putting into question either the ability of one to interpret meaning from dreams or my own ability to do so, or perhaps both. There was one notable exception, however, which I will discuss in detail later on under “Dream Types,” and the results of the interpretation affected me to the point that I abandoned the practice altogether except for occasionally hypothesizing about what some of my own dreams might mean.

But whether dreams do in fact carry any purposeful meaning for us or are merely a means of our brain’s entertaining us during our sleeping hours, I always have looked forward to my nocturnal adventures. When I was younger I generally could remember my dreams fairly often, at least for a time after waking, but as I have grown older I tend to forget them almost as soon as I open my eyes. After I wake I can clearly remember having dreamed, but it is less common for me to recall exactly what my dreams were about. I decided to start this little “dream blog” in the hope that it may help me remember my dreams somewhat better.

At one time, when I was a teen, I actually began a dream diary which I kept for a short time, as I did again briefly in 1984. I had once read that by recording one’s dreams, one would be able to recall them with greater frequency and in greater detail. It seemed to work for me briefly on the two previous occasions, so perhaps it will again with this blog.

But why would it matter? Certainly no one besides myself would find what I dream about while asleep very important. And I sincerely doubt anyone else will have any desire to read through all these descriptions of strange events that occured in my possibly disturbed brain. So I suppose I am recording much of this information for my own enjoyment, throwing in a few random thoughts that might be of some small interest to others in the process. But to those who choose to wade through this material, you do so at your own risk. Do not expect to find any meaningful insight into what makes me tick or what my personality is really like, because one thing I do believe about dreams is that they often are nonsensical. And while some of the subjects I will discuss are rather embarrassing, one cannot help what one dreams. I do not believe that dreams necessarily reflect a person’s true personality or even his own deepest desires. I have on occasion dreamed that I did things that I find totally abhorrent and that I would never do, nor desire to do, in real life. Sometimes I dream of doing ordinary things that I do every day. Sometimes I dream of doing things I wish I could do but can’t. The sheer randomness of the kinds of things I dream causes me to question whether they have any real meaning at all. What causes certain things to happen in dreams is beyond my scope. I have learned simply to accept them, enjoy them (when they are enjoyable), or to forget them (when they are disturbing) and awake to a new day. Occasionally some dream may stay with me during a part of the ensuing day, leading me to reflect on the adventure or on what the events might have to say about various things in my life, but I do not believe they are given me by a divine source or that they have any genuinely profound meaning beyond whatever I can associate with them. Perhaps by recording a few more of my dreams I may be able to discover some kind of pattern that will change my opinion about their purpose, but for now I see them merely (or at least mostly) as nocturnal entertainments.

The various pages on this site provide the following information:

  • Dream Types — a decription of my own classifaction of various kinds of dreams
  • What I Dream — examples of my own dreams that fit within the various types
  • 1969 Dream Diary — entries I made in a dream diary in 1969
  • 1984 Dream Diary — entries I made in a dream diary in 1984 and early 1985
  • Recent Dreams — space for me to add dreams not formerly recorded
  • Comments — space for readers (if there are any) to leave thoughts or comments


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