I cuddle with a new psychiatrist. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I go to a mental health center in a small Northwestern town. The sky is gray and there's greenery everywhere. The building is like a gray log cabin. 

I fill out my paperwork, then get into bed with an elderly woman. We talk about the  paperwork and different things I have to do in order to be seen by her. She is a psychiatrist. 

I get up and do more bureaucratic chores around town so that I can be seen at her clinic. I drive back to her office and she proceeds to spoon me. 

We talk about therapeutic stuff as I drift in and out of sleep. I decide that this is okay since it will never lead to sex or the manipulation that so often happens around sex. 

And then the therapy session is over and I get out of bed.  

INTERPRETATION

I guess this is kind of what therapy feels like? Certainly, therapy is a comfort to me right now--which is a little like cuddling. I'm getting more out of therapy than I usually do right now, because I'm at a lower point than usual. 

Opening a door to other dimensions. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM #1

I'm in my mom's bedroom. It's vast and has no sense of being enclosed. My mother is in large, soft bed in a nightgown. I open a door next to her bed to another dimension. Strange, enormous fishes swim by. Weird birds fly in the air. I see events in the future and things that probably didn't happen in our world. 

DREAM #2

I'm walking down the same road I walk down nearly every day, and I get to a bridge. I've been having a conversation with myself on this walk about what I want to do for a career. I'm also trying to figure out how they made the various levels to Sonic the Hedgehog in the original Sega Genesis video games. I lay down on the pavement next to a pair of children who happen to be there with their mom. There are tiny, adult chickens smaller than my thumb in the dried up river bed. I pick one up between my fingers and say to no one in particular, "How did they get so tiny?" 

INTERPRETATIONS

I think dream #1 is me kind of imagining where my mom might be now that she's passed on. Where is she, and what kind of reality is she in?

I think dream #2 is how I have to figure out what to do from here. I do my thinking and emotional processing on walks. It feels like a big reset button was pushed on my life after my mom died. 

Still going to school even though I died. (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM #1

I'm a ghost. But I still have exams to sit for. I'm in a school, and one of the test administrators can see me and some of the other test-taking ghosts. She guides me to my seat so I can take the test so I can get a good career. 

DREAM #2

I wake up and go down the stairs. My mother is sitting at the dining room table eating breakfast. We have a nice conversation about the upcoming day when I realize this is wrong. She's not supposed to be alive. This isn't real. 

Then I wake up and I prepare to go downstairs. I meet my mom down there. I prepare breakfast and she prepares for the day. Then I realize: she's not supposed to be alive. This is a dream.

Then I wake up and I wait for my mother to come home and come into my room. I've got to do something before she gets here. Then I realize: she's not supposed to be alive. I'm in another dream.

This happens several more times before I actually wake up and realize that my mother is, in reality, not alive. 

INTERPRETATION

My mother recently passed away. I was taking some classes while she was sick, and even before then, it just felt like never-ending homework and exams and busy work. I felt dead inside. I dropped some classes when she got sick. I dropped all of them when she died. 

The extra time I gained from dropping everything I was doing is necessary to take care of her estate, but I can sense that I'm having a very hard time emotionally processing her death. It doesn't feel real. I think I'm having some kind of existential crisis on top of grieving her. 

Satyr Plays 2 giveaway today & tomorrow! (news)

Image by Midjourney

A THANKSGIVING POEM

A bed of pine needles is so soft

until I touch it with bare skin.

A ray of sunshine is so warm 

until it's piercing me in the eyes.

Wild turkeys are so majestic

until I grab one with bare hands.

(Just out of curiosity--not to eat)

Please don't forget that you can download Satyr Plays 2 for Kindle for free today (Thanksgiving) and tomorrow (Black Friday)!

https://www.amazon.com/Satyr-Plays-2-Naja-Tau-ebook/dp/B0DM3MKBG3

eBook giveaway! Satyr Plays 2: a collection of humorous, adult short stories. (news)

ThankChristmas is here! Image by Midjourney.

https://www.amazon.com/Satyr-Plays-2-Naja-Tau-ebook/dp/B0DM3MKBG3

Hello! I hope you are enjoying the crisp, cool weather, the warm nostalgia, and the comfort of good friends and family this holiday season. 

The Satyr Plays 2 eBook is out. You can read a description, read a sample, or even purchase the eBook for Kindle for $6.99 right now at the link provided above. Please note that this book is for adults and has a lot of explicit content, even in the sample. 

In my opinion, it is not necessary to have read anything else in the Lost Atlantis/Satyr Plays universe to be able to pick up on what's going on in this book (although it will help). 

I've scheduled two eBook giveaways: one to celebrate Thanksgiving and one to celebrate Christmas. The eBook will be 100% free to download from Amazon on the following dates:

November 28 & 29
December 25, 26, 27

2024

The sales run from 12 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. 

I recommend clicking "Buy now with 1-Click" instead of "Read for free." "Read for free" is for some kind of subscription service, whereas "Buy now" will allow you to download a more permanent copy to your Kindle. If the price says $0.00, you shouldn't be charged anything.

If you like the book, leaving a review would help me out, but mainly, I just want people to read it! I had a lot of fun writing it, and I hope it's fun to read. 

I received a proof of the paperback in the mail today, and it still needed some work, so I haven't released that yet. (I put extra spaces between the paragraphs that weren't there in the first book, and I wanted them to match. And that led to having to redo the paperback cover.)

I am also in the middle of putting together an audiobook which I narrate myself. I really wish I could do a giveaway or set a lower price for the audiobook, but Audible controls pricing and doesn't do giveaways as far as I can tell. So that's going to be for sale at the regular price. I used better sound equipment for this audiobook, so I think it's going to be an improvement over the first Satyr Plays. 

Enjoy!

Cover reveal for Satyr Plays 2! (news)

 

Hello my friends,

I've been away for a while. I've had some very serious issues that I've needed to go through offline, but I've kept working on my comedy writing. I do anticipate releasing Satyr Plays 2 this month or in December. Satyr Plays is the comedic alternate universe for my Lost Atlantis series. 

There will be an eBook giveaway! So please check back later to see updates about that.

I'm currently working on the following formats for Satyr Plays 2: paperback, eBook, and audiobook. All will eventually be made available on Amazon.

Don't eat too much leftover Halloween candy!

Why isn't someone protecting her? (dream)

Image by Midjourney

DREAM

I'm in a family restaurant. It's definitely a mid-level establishment. It's not fancy, but it's probably kind of expensive. Maybe a family of four would spend a little over $100 to eat there. 

It's got that dark ambiance lighting for night time dining, and a white and mauve-painted clapboard exterior. The paint is too thick, and it looks like it was allowed to drip here and there. It has its own parking lot, and a ramp for wheelchairs.

While I'm here to eat with my family, I can't help but notice a beautiful girl in a pink satin dress. She looks incredibly vulnerable and bewildered. I don't think she's quite aware of where she is or what's going on. But I recognize her--she's rather famous for something on screen. And she's wealthy. But her family has brought her wealth with her into the busy restaurant where anyone could take it. I'm under the impression that they want to show it off. Her family stacks her wealth (her wealth looks like 20lb disc weights that you would put onto a gym barbell) all around the table as they eat their meal. 

When they're done with their meal, her family carries her wealth--who knows where. I see some of them taking it to the trunk of their car. I see some of them just carrying it around deeper into the restaurant. I don't think there's any way this girl can keep track of what's going where. There's some built in protection for her, because we're in public and it's her family. Your family generally looks out for you, but that's not a guaranteed relationship. 

I'm really worried about what's going to happen to her. She's strong enough to make a bunch of money and do things people appreciate, but too vulnerable to keep any of it. How can someone like that prepare for old age? I really wish someone would protect her. 

INTERPRETATION

I have been going through a tremendous amount of stress for the past few weeks, and I've been experiencing a return of some of my bipolar schizoaffective symptoms because of it. 

I'm very frightened of hallucinating. I used to be frightened because I actually believed the aggressive hallucinations were real. But now that I can spot them pretty easily for what they are, I'm more scared of how vulnerable I am when I'm in the middle of psychosis, or experiencing either mania or depression. It's very, very easy for me to be taken advantage of in all kinds of ways when I'm ill: financially, sexually, socially--any way you can think of. It's partly why I'd be concerned about moving back to a large city again. There are more desperate, predatory people in a big city, and if you're not on your toes and thinking very carefully at all times, you can get into trouble really fast. 

So the pace of life is going really fast for me right now, even though I'm in a small city, and I'm concerned about what could happen. I have to take extra precautions to take care of myself right now--to sleep well, to eat healthily, to take walks, to take breaks, to be sociable, to plan out what I need to do ahead of time so I don't rush. Stuff like that.