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The interview went well, I was offered the job, but after giving it an evening's thought, I turned it down. I can do better, especially for the summer, and probably will be doing so in the next week or so.

I almost went back to Louisville that evening. D called, having had a pretty rough day. We talked for a while, and again later in the evening, and things got onto a good-enough keel. But the talk led to something strange.

Nightmares hit Thursday night, and the worst involved me killing a friend. Not the more common lucid dreams - I was purely along for the ride. Woke up pretty scared. So, adrenaline from the nightmares plus concern about D plus having to scrub some other plans for Thursday evening at the last minute, and I had some kind of chemical soup going through me. I had this shell of civilized behavior over the strongest fight-or-flight-or-fuck state of mind I've felt in years, and some text messages and phone calls on Friday inadvertently added to that. Nothing worked to bring me down - I wrote, I drove, reconnected the PS2, went for a walk, etc., and it would not go away. I made things worse by going to Liberty, and the clutter there did a number on whatever strain of OCD that hits me from time to time. Came back home Saturday night, running less-traveled and more-interesting roads than the fastest, most direct route, stayed up until the wee hours trying to read before giving up and mixing a high-strength drink or two and letting that knock me out. Woke up on the couch late Sunday morning, having left bed sometime during the night, made myself take a shower, and watched hockey and handled some GenCon work all afternoon.

Monday, still some residual whatever-this-was in my system. Read, wrote, made some phone calls. Went to class - only one more session!

Going back to Louisville this evening, maybe sooner if I can get an appointment to check out an apartment. Not super-thrilled about the event that the date is centered on, and I won't be able to bail out, but it's only a couple of hours and the company will be good.

Steel Trap

Nov. 10th, 2013 10:14 pm
tracker7: (Default)
I don't often remember my dreams, and the few I do remember are usually lucid dreams. I don't put a lot of faith in the symbolism or meanings presented in a dream; I think, for the most part, dreams are just leftover energy from waking hours. There was some research, recently, that indicates that during sleep the brain physically flushes waste products, and that may be a biochemical explanation for dreams. Heck, I don't know.

A few weeks ago, I had one that's stuck with me. It wasn't lucid, and it wasn't a conventional nightmare, but it rattled me a little bit, and I can't get away from thinking that there was a lesson in here for me. A reminder that sometimes, the best way out is through.

The dream itself? Well, since you asked. I was on the return leg of a road trip, traveling through a sort of generic American Southwest. The road numbers were all wrong, but I can chalk that up to dream reality. As the dream progressed, I kept detouring, taking smaller and smaller roads, and eventually coming to some kind of museum or monument or something that included a restored mine. I went into the mine, exploring and going deeper and deeper, and the chambers and bores got smaller and smaller until I reached the bottom, and couldn't move around enough to get to the ladder leading back to the surface. I tried and tried, but just could not twist around the part of the ladder that extended into the middle of the last chamber. Finally, I broke the bottom of the ladder, which gave me enough room to move and reach up to the rest of the ladder and get out of the mine.

Sometimes, the best way out is through.

I put this in the back of my mind, and it started working out its own solution, combining with the geometrically-worsening situation at the awful day job. Yesterday, the rough draft sprang out at me - just bite the bullet, incur the debt, and borrow enough to cover all expenses for six months. No job, no work except school, spend December learning how to be a student again, and the spring finding out for certain that, 1) this is truly what I want to do, and, 2) I can still do it. My self-confidence, which has always varied wildly in quantity and quality, has very nearly evaporated, and that has left me paralyzed and terrified.

A little more rational now, I'm refining the plan. Still going to be costly, but it's attainable. I've found a better path to the wanted MPH than a straight BSci in biology - UK offers a BSci program through its College of Health Sciences that looks to lead directly into the graduate programs I have my sights set on, and it's a pretty fast track. Before bedtime tonight, I'm submitting some very late FAFSA information and getting other documentation together for money from other sources. Much to do. Much to accomplish.
tracker7: (Reading)
Day Watch is spectacular.  If you haven't seen it, but have seen Night Watch, DW is bigger, louder, flashier, sexier, and Russianer.  If you haven't seen either, you are missing out on some great storytelling and spectacular effects and stunt work.

I finished reading Schismatrix Plus over the weekend, and greatly enjoyed it.  I like Bruce Sterling's writing, and the transhuman/posthuman material here is good food for thought, particularly the comparisons between the cybernetic/bionic Mechanists and the genemodding Shapers.

I also read The First Apocalypse, by John Reston.  It's a fairly detailed look at Europe around 1000 A.D., with all of the fears of the church and its constituents about the impending return of Christ as a recurring background.  Much more focused than John Man's Atlas of the Year 1000, and the two books would likely make for good companion-volume status.

More reading: a loaner from [personal profile] tegyrius, Gil's All Fright Diner.  A werewolf and a vampire encounter an off-the-main-drag diner beseiged by zombies.  From there, the vampire falls in love with a ghost trapped in the graveyard across the road, a teenage sorceress attempting to open up a portal for the Old Gods tries to seduce the werewolf, and all manner of other weirdness affects the area.  It's a good quick read, plenty funny, and you won't remember it in a year.

Work is going to be fairly awful this week.  Only one auto sales rep in the office because of resignation and vacation, and since I'm only there half-time, we're going to be stretched very thin.  I'm almost hoping that the new classified manager uses some of her considerable pull within the division to expedite my transfer, which is now a month overdue, and will likely be delayed another month.  What a remarkable cockup all this is turning out to be.

Woke up out of a curious dream this morning.  I was seeing a movie with an ex, except it looked nothing like her, but it was definitely her.  The movie was a "director's/anniversary cut" of a movie that we both had really liked way back when, but of course being a dream, there was no clue as to what the movie actually was.

30 days until GenCon.
tracker7: (Default)
I'm becoming more and more confused by these dreams involving parts of my city that don't exist.  I don't mind so much the part where I'm driving an Audi TT to a book signing, but when I'm racing past a massive coal loading complex alongside a navigable river, or engaging in urban archaeology in a place that is not here while my dream-self's brain is going, "Yep, Lexington," it gets a little bit strange.
tracker7: (Comics)
No icky spider dreams last night.  So very happy with that.  Didn't get enough sleep, but since I spent some time chatting with Erin last night, it's okay.

Tony Blair's stepping down in about 6 weeks, Al Sharpton proved once more to be a dumbass, and OJ Simpson, when trying to take a dinner break from Finding the Real Killers (TM) was tossed out of a hoity-toity steak joint in Louisville.  His lawyer is planning to play the race card, ignoring the fact that Michael Jordan and his party were being taken care of a couple tables away.

Of course, the only things that Jordan's ever killed are NBA records and opposing teams' playoff hopes.  Might have something to do with it.

2-part season finale of Supernatural starts tonight.  Still a fine little show.  I should not be so caught up in a UPN/CW product, but good stuff comes from the strangest places.

Horsemen game this weekend.  Mom&Dad are bringing one of my aunts to this one, and I'm really looking forward to it.  I'm hoping they come up early enough to let me show my aunt some of Lexington, but, knowing my dad, there will be countless hours of pointless screwing around before they get on the road.

Oh - new avatar!

Indigo Eyes

May. 9th, 2007 10:20 am
tracker7: (Default)
I am sick and tired of having dreams about an infestation of fist-sized spiders.  Damn near everybody I know was in the one last night, which, thankfully, was set in someone else's place.  Some of the spiders turned out to be plastic toys, which I'm sure means something in dream-interpretation land, but buggered if I know what.  Someone was stripping to be all shocking and stuff, but no one wanted to see it.

Gah.  What is going on here?

Dead Souls

May. 3rd, 2007 08:10 am
tracker7: (Default)
This week's comics:

Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born #4:  Very pretty.  Nice mythology essay.  I know it's going to kill me eventually, but this is wonderful stuff.
Iron Man #17:  Angst.  Powersuits.  Tentacle monster.  Look, Knauf Brothers, this is Iron Man, not anime.
Omega Flight #2:  Losing interest in this at a speed normally seen only during basketball season.
Teen Titans #46:  Oh, screw you, Slade.  "I've given them a family."

Tuesday's memorable dream:  I was directing recovery efforts in a familiar city that had suffered some kind of cataclysm.  Low-yield nuke, massive conventional blast, something.  Very vivid, if geographically vague.

Last night:  There were zombies.  Not in the same place, however.

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