With thanks to hosts D.L. Hammons and Nicole Zoltack, we have another year of the Deja Vu Blogfest. In this event we post a blog post from the past year that we'd like to see get more exposure. That's an easy one for my blog about dreams A Faraway View since this blog gets very few visitors. Maybe this blogfest will change that.The post I've chosen to revive from the past appeared on Thursday March 13th of 2014. I hope this reappearance whets your curiosity enough to visit again now and then. A Faraway View normally posts each Thursday.
The Adverse Affect of Blogging on Dreams
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| Example of dark circles (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Since I began blogging in September of 2009, more than once have I awoken in the midst of a night's sleep with a concern about blogging. Before I learned how to pre-schedule blog posts I would just write a post and then publish it. This lead to posts appearing randomly at various times of day. Then I read somewhere that posts should appear on a regular time schedule. I just had to figure out what time would be best.
This concern about posting times began to cause me to wake up at odd hours at times. Usually I would try to have a post completed so I could publish it as soon as I woke up. Sometimes I would forget and remember during the night. It was probably in dreams that I was reminded about preparing my post to publish in the morning. Sometimes my sleep, hence my dreams was disrupted.
The discovery of scheduling the posts to appear automatically at designated times was a boon and a blessing to my sleep time--for the most part that is. Blogging and internet in general still frequently affects my sleep and dreams in an adverse way.
This phenomena is comparable to dreaming about work, school, or anything that might involve a major part of our lives. These days I spend so much of my time on the internet and doing things related to my blogs that these activities preoccupy much of my thinking both consciously and subconsciously. I won't make any mental health judgments about this. It's just the way things are in my life now.
Occasionally I have awoken from a dream about blogging--usually not a troubling dream, but one that causes me to dwell upon my blogging. The dream may be related to an idea for a post. There are times when I have gotten up in the middle of the night to compose a post or at least lay out a considerable amount of notes so the idea would not be forgotten. Naturally this takes away time from sleep and dreams.
At other times I might dream about other bloggers. This is usually not adverse I would suppose, but these dreams can create a peculiar sense of involvement with people I don't actually know. Can such fantasies play a negative role in my perception of waking life?
Then, as I have mentioned in other blog posts, my dreams sometimes delude me into thinking something is wrong with my blog, my computer, or some aspect of my internet life. Sometimes I wake up confused from dreams such as these and it may take a while for me to understand that I was only dreaming.
Probably my major concern is that blogging draws me away from sleep and dreams and I may have a compulsion to go online instead of sleeping when I should be at a state of rest. This can result in sleep deprivation. I often feel tired and think this may be a reason why. Being tired, I will typically take an afternoon nap during which any dreams that I have are usually not what I would call "quality dreams" in that they don't seem long enough, they lack story and have minimal coherency insomuch that a dream can be considered to be "coherent".
There is no good solution to this that I can think of. And in fairness to my internet involvement, my sleeping habits do seem to be getting better of late. Then again, maybe I'm just adapting to having the internet influence in my life. This may just be another plight of modern existence.
Is your sleep and dream life affected by your activity on line? Do you think the internet can be a danger to the mind? What are some ways that modern technology intrudes on your ability to sleep well and dream healthily?
Well I spend the vast majority of my day on line and I rarely if ever dream about it at all. What I don't like dreaming about are places from my past. When I lived out west, I dreamt about the Cape/Sandwich almost every single night. Now that I'm back, I've started dreaming about Washington. I could live w/o that.
ReplyDeleteI often dream about places and people from the past. Usually it's good--or at least interesting--but sometimes not so much. My dreams are an unpredictable hodgepodge.
DeleteLee
Thank goodness for blog post scheduling!!! I would be a mess...especially during WRiTE CLUB...without it! :)
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad I found the scheduling blog function.
DeleteLee
Alright, Lee! Now this is the third Arlee blog I've visited for the Deja Vu fest... ;)
ReplyDeleteThis is like Deja Vu all over again, lol!
I am one of those people who rarely remembers dreams, even when I wake up during them. The features of my dream are vague and disjointed and rapidly skitter away like cockroaches fleeing the light.
I think I'm dreaming "deeply" but it's so disconnected from my conscious awake state that I have no connection to it.
Who knows? Maybe it's because I'm warped enough in my waking state?
Happy Deja Vu!
Dream remembering requires training and focus. You could do it if you really wanted to, but for most people I guess daily life is the more important thing to focus on. And that's true. The dream memories are like a peculiar hobby.
DeleteLee
Like all things we have ye olde learning curve before we get the process under out belts and it becomes second nature to us. Good thing, too, or the world would be filled with sleep-deprived bloggers/writers.
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas and Happy Deja Vu
When I first started blogging my mind was definitely in a far different state than it is now--at least where on line activity is involved.
DeleteLee
Sometimes my sleep is disturbed by anxiety over deadlines ... not often but sometimes. Thank heavens for ability to schedule posts. I also wonder if the quality of my dreams may be affected by being too much online .. I don't know. But when dreams come, sometimes after a long while of desert dryness, I catch them very gratefully!
ReplyDeleteI can't help but be convinced that much of our dream life consists of rehashing our daily life. This might be part of the reason that many people don't remember their dreams as dreams, but it all gets lumped in with the activities of our waking hours.
DeleteLee
I don't think I've specifically dreamed about blogging. Not yet anyway. But I do dream every night. And I LOVE my dreams. Most of the time my dreams are incredibly detailed, colorful and very pleasant. I especially like when my loved ones on the other side and my passed dogs come to visit me in my dreams. I always wake up so happy when I've had a visit from my dead relatives or doggies. The last two nights were exactly that: my deceased aunt and uncle were in my dream and then my greyhound Harry appeared in the next dream. I also find dreams useful when I have a problem without a solution. Many times I'll go to sleep with that problem on my mind and I'll end up having a dream in which a great solution miraculously comes to me. I've had that happen often when I was in advertising and doing media proposals for clients. THAT is really cool!
ReplyDeleteOff the subject here, but I just have to say: I LOVE the painting that you have in your Faraway View banner! Who is the painter and do you know the title of the work? BEAUTIFUL!
Glad to hear from a fellow vivid dreamer. I too feel very happy when I've dreamed of those who have passed. Usually it's been my father, but I'm looking forward to a visit from my recently passed mother.
DeleteI'm so glad that you appreciate the beautiful piece of art that graces my header. Embarrassingly I forget the name of the work, but there's no forgetting the artist responsible for it. This was created by my oldest daughter Ada Zdanowicz. She had a website with samples of her work, but it is now down. Hopefully she'll get back to her artwork and resume promoting it on a new website. Right now she's got a baby on the way to add to the two little ones she already has so between that and her work as a video editor she's got her hands full and hasn't been doing much with her artwork. I'll let her know that you enjoyed her work.
Lee
Well tell her she's got a fan out here. She's quite talented!!! And I too hope you get a visit from your mom soon... I know that will be so sweet for you. I wish that for you for Christmas, my friend.
DeleteFirstly - the day I found out how to schedule posts (on the A-Z blog) made life so much easier! I do dream regularly, sometimes quite vividly, but I have to talk about it as soon as I wake up or I forget really quickly. I do find a lot of my dreams are hash-ups of the days events, but not always x
ReplyDelete