You know you're way too much into blogging when you're in your boss's office and you have to stifle the impulse to ask him to repeat what he just said for bloggadocia purposes. My wife says I should start carrying a tape recorder.
He's telling me about his stressful work week and suddenly - so suddenly that I was taken off guard and thus am not able to quote him directly - said he had a strange dream the previous night in which Spongebob Squarepants figured prominently. Spongebob was gesticulating wildly and saying something which I'm now unable to recall because I was laughing at the abrupt mention of Spongebob in a business setting.
We're talking a 50-something year old never-been-married man with no children and no family in the form of nieces or nephews in town. If I had any reportorial (or psychiatric) skills I would've asked him: "How do you even know what SpongeBob looks like?"
My boss is the anti-"grey flannel man" of the '50s. There is nothing grey or flannel about him. He's good at reading body language so I hope I was able to cover my momentary cringe at his declaration (during the same meeting) of being a "Presbyterian predestinationist". In these cases I always have to go through the mental arithmetic of reminding myself that Christians have far more in common rather than what they differ on, but I always skip a beat in the meantime. He dropped the subject quickly enough to suggest he noticed my reaction.
Anyway, I was momentarily jealous of his dreams. Mine seem more functionary and gritty to the extent they are remembered at all. Sometimes I'm laboring under a deadline, trying to solve a work problem. (I once joked to my boss that I should get paid time and a half for last night.) There's usually nothing light or cartoonish, and never anything like Steven Riddle's recent spiritual confection (though Guinness helps me fly there).
Sometimes I dream in words, not pictures, in neatly organized paragraphs. An editor comes around afterwards striking sentences and changing word choices. (I hate the editor guy, though not at the time because at the time I think he's engaging in useful work. After all, I think I'm actually writing, presumably for the blog.) The one time I remembered the dream in the morning I found the writing wasn't even usable.
The other night there was a "dream first" - I went to Confession. See, I just end up dreaming what I do during the day. I work, I write, I go to Confession, I dream about those things. No creativity or imagination at all. Meanwhile Steven has his L.S.D. dreams, my wife dreams of little doggies and kittens, and my boss of cartoon characters...
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