I had a pretty unique psychological experience this morning, at least for me, so I figured I had better write about it before it evaporates from my brain like the morning dew.

I basically experienced a period of semi-lucid dreaming. I was not directing the dream, exactly, so it was not fully lucid. But I was choosing to dream, and influencing the dream a bit, so it was definitely on the path to the lucid dreaming experience.

And I would love to say this was the result of a diligently applied regimen of soul-searching, inner reflection, and psychotropic experimentation, but honestly, it was just a fluke.

Or so I assume. I don’t know. Maybe I have been striving for this sort of thing for a long time, but not on the conscious level, and that is what all this super intense dreaming has been leading to all these years.

That is an intriguing notion and it would certainly be nice to imagine that all this fucked up dream time has meaning and purpose after all. I have been striving to master my dream state! I have taken my metaconscious to the next level! I am getting what ascetics strive for, and without all that self-denial and flagellation and shit! Sweet!

But I am a little too realistic for that. We will see if it ever happens again, and only when I have established that I can do it regularly will I draw conclusions of that sort.

Despite my many skills, I make a lousy mystic.

The experience was quite fascinating. It was as though the dream world was the ultimate in virtual reality. It was like it was an invisible helmet I could don with an act of will, one that completely covered my head and replaced all that I saw and heard with an illusion.

It was like I could just refocus my eyes somehow, and be in this other realm. I was still aware of standard reality, the Real World, but I was consciously choosing to enter the dream realm with all the casualness of someone deciding to watch TV.

Given that television practically raised me, that is not an idle observation.

I even remember thinking that I knew I could go back to the real world whenever I wanted to, so it was safe to just mess around in the dream realm for a while.

And congenital escapist that I am, I was not exactly eager to come back to my boring, stupid, pathetic real life. The world of my imagination was so much nicer in every way!

And you don’t have to be Freud to figure that one out, savvy? That has basically been my priority ever since I was a bored kid daydreaming his life away in elementary school.

When you are smart enough to finish your work in five minutes, and you are not allowed to read in class (because that is the real problem these days, kids reading too much), and you have no friends to talk to even if that was allowed, what is there to do but to retreat into your own mind and just, well, think about stuff? Process information? Deepen your understanding?

Damn, I was a weird kid.

And all the dreaming I did when semi-lucid was pleasant. No monsters of the subconscious rearing their ugly stupid heads to turn my daydreams into nightmares, Better Than Life style.

In terms of lucidity, the most interesting part was when I was dreaming that my bed was lying on a beach on a pleasant summer day. That was when I began experimenting with my lucid state like it was a form of entertainment, marveling at how I could look all around and see the same scene all around me, just like I was really there.

Yet also knowing that I wasn’t really there. I didn’t realize that at first… at first it was just a dream like any other and I was fully immersed.

But eventually I figured out this whole refocusing the eyes business, and then things got meta. I remember looking out at the water, and looking up at some houses near the shore and thinking “So those are the people I envy. To have a house right on the water like that has been a dream of mine for my whole life. ”

Or at least since my first trip to the beach, I suppose. Still, even as I thought that thought, I knew that what I was seeing was an illusion. I knew that I was basically looking at a VR photograph.

In fact, there was part of the dream where the image froze as I turned my head, and I remember thinking “Oh no, I broke it… maybe my computer can’t handle the frame rate when I move my head too fast!”

And then the scene unfroze when I moved my head more slowly. How messed up is that? Keep in mind, to me this scene was as real as what I am experiencing right now.

Except I knew it was not totally real. And I was still in my bed, naked with a blanket on me (I sleep in the buff. Now you know. ), just like in real life.

I rather liked the idea of sleeping on a comfy bed on the beach, truth be told. All the peacefulness of being at the beach with all the comfort of being in bed.

In fact, I remember thinking that if I lived by the water, someplace where I could go to sleep looking at the ocean, I would sleep so well!

One more interlude worth noting : I dreamed (still semi-lucidly) that I was living in a house full of furries, some of whom snuggled up in bed with me and asked me if there was anything else I needed before I felt fully moved in, and I felt such peace and contentment!

And I remember thinking “This is how it should be. This is what I deserve. ”

That is a very significant thought for the likes of me. To consciously and completely think “I deserve better than what I have!” is a big deal thought on my journey to overcome my low self-worth and my resulting/codependent passivity.

The form it took is also intriguing. A place where I felt safe and accepted and welcome. That suggests that I feel, on some level, that I have worn out my welcome where I am.

Or maybe I jsut can’t believe that anyone could still like me after knowing me well. I don’t know.

Still, this all feels like progress to me.

Literally the day after another article stimulated me to write about writing and depression, I came across this article about comedy and mental illness to stimulate a slightly different lobe of the brain.

First, let’s discuss the article itself. It is a fascinating subject for a crazy comedy nerd myself, but I think it started from a flawed thesis (loosely deduced, it might be stated as “Is mental illness good or bad for comedy?”) and then explicates that thesis in a raw and unfocused, and hence unsatisfying, manner.

There is plenty of potentially interesting stuff in the article, but without a clear and well established thesis to add structure to the stream of observations, it ultimately, in my opinion, fails to deliver.

Perhaps I would be less judgmental of the article if the premise did not appeal to me so much. And I will say right here and right now, I am not saying I could do better.

My own writing often lacks focus and coherence, especially the stuff I write for this space, so that too perhaps informs my opinion of the piece.

Still, I don’t think anyone has ever seriously proposed that mental illness is universally good for comedy. Sure, a lot of comedy people are tightly wound and neurotic, and there is probably a pretty good reason why a lot of successful comedians drink, do drugs, or otherwise show signs of self-medicating depression or anxiety.

And sure, a comedy type might make a crack about how backstage at the comedy club seems like group therapy, or how they become a standup comedian because it was cheaper than therapy (ha, ha, ha).

But I think the article goes a little far in trying to explore that.

Still, it is an interesting topic, so here are my thoughts on it.

I think there is some truth to the notion that the funniest people are the ones who truly need to laugh. It is a deep pain and darkness of the soul that provides the driving force for honing one’s comedic skills. The constant pressure to amuse oneself and hence chase away the darkness inside is the same pressure that forges the mind into a comedy-generating machine, one that constantly seeks out the funny side of things just to try to maintain some sort of island of safety out of remembered laughter in a deep dark sea of depression.

That, certainly, could lead to somebody becoming a comedy fan. But not all fans of something try to do it themselves. What drives the comedy fan to become a comedy producer?

Well, you know what is better than making yourself laugh? Making others laugh. Especially if you are shy and/or neurotic and/or nerdy enough that you have a lot of problems relating to people in the usual way.

You make people laugh, and then bask in that glow of approval and happiness. Making people laugh is especially attractive to sensitive, empathic people, because you get to enjoy their happiness as well as your own. Making people happy makes high empathy people happy. It is just that simple.

So is there a relationship between comedy and mental illness? Yes. But it does not necessarily mean that mental illness and comedy are joined at the hip, and the article’s final conclusion (such as it is) that some mental illness is good for comedy, but not TOO much… well, that’s hardly earth shattering, is it?

I mean, like, DUH.

Myself, I really want to make people laugh. I want to make others happy in the way that comedy has made me happy. Like all true artists, I want to create that which has been good to me.

And I definitely also crave the approval and rewards for making people laugh. That includes the financial, obviously. Hey, I live on $8K/year, money is kind of on my mind all the time, in the way someone who is slowly starving to death thinks about food a lot.

That was sort of a joke.

But I am not particularly interested in standup. While I have been known to greatly enjoy performing (like a lot of shy people, I have a hammy side (a side of ham?), too), for some reason, being a standup comedian does not appeal to me.

I am a little surprised to note this, as I was really into standup at a certain point of my life. Certainly, during the standup comedy boom of the 1980s, I soaked up all the standup I could.

But never during that time did I really imagine myself as a comedian. Perhaps I am too shy for the job, I don’t know. Or even back then, I had some clue that I was better suited to writing than performing.

But does that have to do more with my mental illness than with free choice? Certainly it would make sense for a shy but creative person to prefer the role of creating the comedy but not being in the limelight for the actual end user experience.

But I have performed, and without much in the way of stage fright. I experienced anxiety before the performance (in plays, not standup) but it was the sort of alternately pleasant and painful sort of anxiety that mixes excitement, anticipation, and trepidation. Certainly, it never made me not want to perform. Performing is hella fun.

So why not become a comedian? I could just write my routine, practice it, then treat standup like I am doing a one person play every time.

Still not appealing to me. Standup is such a limited art form. I want to paint on a much larger canvas than that. Writing funny novels might just be the right art form for me.

I can write as big as I want without worrying about how to stage it, or shoot it, or whatever. The novel is one of the most powerful forms of expression for that exact reason.

Hmmm. I might not have gotten to the core of the link between mental illness and comedy, but I may have just figured out what to do with my life.

I’ll take it.