Going to try to get some of my dreams down here because the most recent round is still fairly fresh in my mind and seems pretty interesting.

I dreamed that it was my first day going to a simply massive university. Weirdly, the university seemed to consist mainly of one gigantic building. (Once more, my dreams take place in a large indoor location, even when it makes no damned sense. I am even agoraphobic in my dreams. )

The first part of the dream that I can recall, I am lost (of course) somewhere in the upper floors of this building. I think it had at least thirty floors.

I am lost because, while I managed to make it to my first class of the day, I have completely forgotten what other classes I have for the day, and need to go get a new college calendar from the office on the first floor in order to figure it out.

This is quite like the dreams where I am back in high school and can’t recall what classes I have at what times that day so I have to go ask in the school office. This actually happened to me several times when I was in high school, and it was always embarrassing because the secretaries would always make a big deal out of having to look up my schedule in the file cabinet.

I think this was because they did not want students making a habit of using them as their schedule keepers instead of actually filling out the schedule themselves. And you just know some teenagers would totally do that. The fact that I was not that kind of student was not exactly evident, given what a mess I tend to me and how I dressed all heavy metal back then.

Anyhow, this recent dream was the same sort of thing, just academically upgraded to a university that is primarily in an office tower.

And that kind of works, really. Office towers have offices for teachers and conference rooms for classes and break rooms for faculty lounges and so forth. I rather liked the atmosphere. It somehow felt a little homier and more relaxed and informal than the rather stiff vibe at a typical university.

Not your standard view of academia versus the private sector, but I am a distinctly nonstandard sort.

So there I am, in the dream world, wandering through a maze of corridors and conference rooms and lounges and so on. I keep having to pass through classes in session, or at least looking into them to see if there is a door leading to the stairs down to the next lowest floor. This is, of course, the thing a social phobic wants the least, but in my dream, I soldier on.

Not really much of a choice, to be honest.

The reason I have to keep looking for the stairs is that the elevators just don’t go all the way up to the floors I am on. This is not impossible in real life. I have been in buildings where the elevators do not go all the way up. I figure this is because the extra floors were part of an expansion and they decided that, to save having to expand the elevator shafts (which I imagine would be complicated and expensive), people could just use the stairs for those last few floors.

But still, not real likely. Whatever. Dreams.

So I have to go down at least three or four floors just to get to where the elevators start. At some point, I even tell people that it has taken me all morning just to get to the elevators.

The elevator is where things start to get seriously weird. For one thing, it’s a very large elevator, the size of a small office or break room itself.

It has bulletin boards on the walls, and I notice there is a notice on the wall that announces that the elevator now has a special express mode for people who need to get to the ground floor in a hurry.

Boffo, that sounds great, I think. The faster I get down there, the faster I can catch up with where the hell I am supposed to be right now.

So I press the special “express mode” button, and as others file into the surprisingly roomy elevator, I tell them this will be an express trip and they should be ready for a bit of a ride.

When I press the button, a strange pink plastic object is ejected, and I eventually figure that, in order to engage the express mode, I have to find the place where said object plugs into the elevator wall.

I guess, to keep people from engaging express mode by accident. Whatever.

So it’s a little like a drop ride going down, which I find fun. Then once I am down there, I ask some people where I would go to get a new calendar, and then things start getting really weird.

I am led to this spooky and abandoned looking building which I am told is the offices of the university, and some doors open up and this spooky evil voice says something like “Who goes there?”.

I tell it I want a new calendar, and it cackles evilly and says “Oh, I think I can make something like that for you..” and I get the feeling it is making some sort of evil automaton horse to act as my calendar. (What? Dunno. )

At that point, the person who brought me there says “I am so sorry, you should not have to deal with such a being!” and I get the feeling that said person is going to hold off the evil creature so I can escape.

So I start floating (yup… floating… ) as fast as I can towards where we came in, and I am terrified that this evil creature is going to get me.

Eventually, I escape, or the scene ends. The next bit of the dream I remember, I have gone to more or less a random class with the intention of asking my fellow students to borrow their calendars at the end of the class. But the classroom is warm and I end up falling asleep during the lecture.

And when I wake up, it’s the next day of classes.

Sleeping in my dreams again… that is just so weird.

Anyhow, as usual, there was more, but those are the major plot points.

Now, to go back to sleep, and dream anew.

Finally, I am feeling the holiday spirit. Warmth and joy are filling me up, I feel way less tense and depressed than before, and I am looking forward to Xmas day and opening my prezzies from my family and all that good stuff.

Plus, dinner with Joe’s family on Christmas Day. Turkey turkey TURKEY. (Protip : I love turkey!)

I’ve got my Xmas gifts from two of my roomies. Well, sort of. Joe has assured me that he ordered a bunch of shirts for me from my ancient Cafe Press store.

Warning, the layout is a tad crude. But I designed all those shirts and whatnot myself, many a moon ago. The idea was that it would be an outlet for my comedy writing skillz and a way to make some cash.

But like all of my creative projects so far, it failed utterly due to my complete inability to promote myself. Well, and the fact that my graphic skills are below primitive.

And I got a little too into the funky font thing. My dear friend Felicity could probably have done a better job. Now and then I tell myself that I should start over and keep things simple. See what sort of style the most popular stuff uses and try a close variant of that for my funny, funny words.

In other words, totally copy their style then file the serial numbers off. Hey, I am not a visual artist, I am a wordsmith. When it comes to the visuals, I have no style, no pride, and no artistic integrity.

Whatever gets people to buy my stuff is fine by me. I would really, really, really love to be able to earn my living, or at least some cash. Earning income would vastly improve my self-image and do wonders for my depression due both to that and just plain being able to buy nice things for myself and make me feel way less restricted and limited and cramped up inside.

The real prescription for my depression would be money, as is true for a lot of poor folks. Living on $8k/year is just plain depressing on its own. I bet if I had even a minimum wage standard of living, I would be less than half as depressed as I am now.

Sadly, the usual way to get one of those is to work a minimum wage job, and I am not capable of that, for I am disabled. And for the crime of being unable to work, society has decided that I deserve only barely enough money to live on.

After all, we don’t want people who can’t work to be happy. We just want to make sure they don’t die, because that would make us feel bad.

But happiness without work? Perish the thought!

Um. But back to holly jolly thoughts!

I guess along with the Xmas spirit, I am also feeling a little holiday blues. The holiday is very consumerist, after all, in addition to being able family and friends and goodness.

Oh right, I don’t get the family or friends thing, either. Riiight. Geez, no wonder this holiday is so fraught with peril for me. It sucks to be a sentimental sensitive soul like me with none of the usual ways to celebrate the day available to me. Le sigh!

But like I said before, I refuse to cynically reject Christmas just because it has not had much for me in it for a while. Some day I will have a family of my own to share it all with, and I see no reason to reject it when I fully plan on embracing it wholeheartedly again some day.

For now, I drift between embracing it the best I can, and enduring it.

I get the feeling that a lot of people feel the same way about it.

I suppose to start a friend, I will at least need a boyfriend, or ideally, a husband. (What can I say, I am a monogamy minded person. I want a man I can devote myself to, and who in return spoils and indulges me. Transient romance is very nice, I suppose, but I want something that endures. )

And that would involve meeting a lot more frogs to find my prince, and by “a lot more” I mean “any”, because right now, my entire dating world presence is a few profiles on a few dating sites that have completely failed to generate much of a response, probably because they are all wordy and weird.

But hey, “wordy” and “weird” are two of my primary personality traits. If they can’t handle that, we probably will not get along anyhow.

Or at least, that is what I tell myself. I admit, I have played with the idea of creating a totally bogus dating persona called “HorseHungBillionaire” and seeing how many people respond, but I am not quite that cynical. I would feel bad about getting people’s hopes up, even if they are vain, shallow, pathetic people who lack the common sense to wonder why someone like that would be on a dating site.

Fun to think about, though. Get a public domain image of a super hot guy. Write a profile where he’s just a lonely poor little rich boy looking for someone to rescue from their shitty lives and turn into a modern prince. “But you have to be able to handle my ten inch cock… ”

OK, I admit it. The evilness of my mind scares me a little sometimes. I am sure glad that I am a basically very nice and caring person and so I would never do some of the things my wicked and devious brain cooks up. I just think the bad thoughts, enjoy them, and then… put them away.

Intellectually, this is, I admit, a little like the guy with a million guns who polishes them all the time but keeps assuring people he would never, ever use them on anyone.

Not while there’s still other options open to them….

Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year, people!