Haven’t added to the old diary (what used to be the old blog) in a while, and I have no idea burning a hole in my brain pan with their fervour to get out, so I figure, this is the time. Plus, I have had a mildly wretched day so far, so I don’t feel like working real hard at the moment.

I hear you ask “Wretched? Why for?”

Oh, the usual reason : really crappy sleep. I am pondering trying a ban on nap in the afternoon, because that seems to be the time when the demon strikes and I really get taken out to sea and left there. Perhaps if I were to keep my sleep between 12 am and 12 pm, I would sleep better and not have so haunted a head.

I must admit, though, I was dreaming some interesting shit. I had a very long and intense dream where my brother (but not my real brother, Dave, just some unnamed dream brother) had just taken a wild chance and bought a small franchise video shop type place, and given me a job there. It was an odd place (although of course in the dream it didn’t seem odd) that seems to have a little of everything. For example, at one point a customer came in and bought some strange things that were like cross-shaped hole reinforcers from a stationary store, but she called them something like “drawing guides”. Why does a DVD rental place sell those? Who knows.

At first I was there by myself, and walking around looking at stuff trying to figure out what all I had gotten myself into and what there was to work with. It seemed like a very well organized, established place, and I was looking forward to being a part of it.

But eventually, in my dream, other people started showing up, including the regular employees, who at first I thought were just busy but eventually I figured out they were pointedly ignoring me. Snubbing me, in fact. I was, after all, the interloper, the person who had been forced on them by powers above and beyond their control, and they had done just fine without me, so I guess they just plain resented the hell out of me.

Nevertheless, I tried to help customers, find useful things to do, and in general help out. But even the customers seemed to hate me, and would just smile indulgently but patronizingly at me and then go right behind the counter to get what they wanted, or poke around the back rooms without asking, and generally just completely disrespect me and the business.

Snide marks were made about me maybe not being able to “fit” behind the counter. And at one point, one of the long time employees straight out told me to just find a chair somewhere and sit down and do nothing.

So eventually, I blew a fuse and gave a big, Hollywood style earnest but firm speech, along the lines of “I know that none of you asked for me to be here, but my brother does own the franchise now, and he hired me, so we are stuck with one another. I have five years experience in a similar place (editor’s note : more like three, in the real world) and I am here to work. Yeah, I don’t know the products or the system yet, but neither did you at one point, right? So let’s start over again, and let me show you what I can do for this place. Okay?”

Nobody cheered, but a lot of the people who had been mean to me looked ashamed of themselves, and everyone went back to what they were doing, seeming properly chastened.

I think that’s where the dream ended. I don’t remember anything after that, anyhow. This was obviously one of my “big emotional scene” type dreams where I have to defend myself verbally with a big speech or argument.

The cathartic purpose of that sort of the dream is embarrassingly obvious. Really, brain, can’t you bury it in imagery a little deeper? Where’s the fun in interpreting so obvious a dream?

Mt theory is that whatever it was, I would figure it out anyhow, so my brain doesn’t bother.

Anyhow, I find this kind of dream, while obvious, to be a good sign because it shows that on the subconscious level, I am developing stronger ego defenses. In these dreams,I am nearly always basically defending my right to exist, and for a long long time, I have felt I had no such right.

I still kind of feel that way, to be honest, but it is ebbing with time as my psyche slowly heals and learns to build and maintain a stable self-image. A lot of depression stems from that lack of a stable sense of self, which leaves the person to be vulnerable to wide swings of self-worth at any moment because they are left with only whatever inputs they get from the outside (or imagine they are getting) to define them.

Other than unpleasantly deep sleep, though, I have been doing OK. I took a bunch of the stuff under “Articles” in this place and submitted links to it to Fark. I figured, it can’t do any harm, and who knows, maybe it will bump up my hit count a little and I will get some comments.

I have gotten some comments out of it, which is very cool. I thrive on interaction and feedback. Some Farkers have told me I suck and I should stop posting links there, and that hurts, no doubt about it. But you don’t develop a tougher skin for criticism by avoiding it, so that is not going to slow me down.

Besides, the people complaining are probably just negative idiots who compulsively shit on anything new anyhow. So why should I care what they think?

Next, I will submit some stuff to Reddit, as that seems to be the hotness lately when it comes to anything-goes link aggregation and meme generation and so on.

Wish me luck!