I’m going to try something new.

I tend to have fairly vivid dreams. They also can be pretty crazy. So I’m going to attempt to write them down and maybe throw out a little analysis. Some of them are pretty clear; some are not.

My goal is two-fold:

• Remember some of these dreams and what my subconscious was going through at the time
• Be able to come back to perhaps come up with a better interpretation.

The Dream

The first dream in this series is pretty straight forward, as far as I can tell. I was in my family’s cabin up in northern Minnesota with a good friend, and we were hanging out watching tv or something.¹ It was the middle of the day and sunny outside, but the windows were mostly covered with cobwebs and dust. The light still managed to show through into the cabin. Outside, after I brushed away some of the dust and cobwebs, I could see on either side of the cabin a young family playing in the sun. Something like a standard father/mother/children setup.

As I turn back towards the inside of the cabin, I see that my friend is gone, and I’m alone in the gloom.

The Analysis

As I mentioned, this one feels pretty easy to interpret.

Given my recent string of failed relationships, and seeing the general unhappiness from all my married friends here, I’ve been thinking maybe the whole long-term relationship thing isn’t for me. Whether or not I want to have children is also a question mark. I don’t mind kids for an hour or so, but I really don’t want to spend any more time than that with them. I just don’t enjoy being around them.

Now, I haven’t “made” this decision (there’s always time to go back on it), but it is something I have been thinking about. I see the sacrifices my friends make for their families, and how rare it is that they get the time to relax by themselves and do what they enjoy. It seems pretty clear that me at a cabin in the woods, hanging out with a friend, represents this freedom to do my own thing and be on my own. But the fact that the cabin is dusty and full of cobwebs, while outside the families play in the sun, seems to indicate pretty strongly that I still think that’s probably the right choice, even if in my waking moments I say (and think) I don’t want it.

Hanging out with a friend only to have him disappear is also pretty strongly indicative of the reality (and probably my fear) that even if I make this choice for myself, there’s a low likelihood that I’ll just get to keep living my life as it is now forever. My friends will find partners, have kids, and that will become the focus in their lives.

At this point I could probably muse about the implications and how I’m feeling in relation to this dream, but I’m thinking I’ll just leave this here for now as it is. Maybe the analysis is enough, and I can come back and re-read it later to see how I feel about it in the future.

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1. I actually had this dream a few days (maybe even a week) ago, so this detail is a bit hazy at this point. ↩︎