I dreamt, but these have since been forgotten. I also skipped writing Jan. 3rd’s down; but then after dreaming four nights in a row when it had been a while, I figured something special was happening.

For context, while I have had a couple months averaging 10-15 days with at least one dream, I had written down a dream only one day in December, one in November, three in October, and two in September. January through August averages out to seven nights.

This was both a return to previous patterns and something new.

[Continued in Notes for 01.07.25]

I’m in a train? Going back and forth from two different cars, trying to make a deal – walking straight forward, very business like, fast, sunglasses on, trying not to get stopped, serendipitously check a menu to see whether it would be worth stopping for or if I should just keep going when a lady grabs my arm and tries to get me to try fish eyes. I try to politely say no and turn away, at a dead end but she says Val, Val you have try these, they’re a delicacy. Val but Val and I ask how she knows my name. She looks hurt but says she’s the illustrator for the book I wrote that was being turned into a movie

Babies taken away from mothers, Authoritarian regime

A bird has just given live birth and the baby is huge, tucked into a pouch on the moms chest. In the dream I think it’s a bald eagle, but both baby and its mom were mostly bald so it might have been a vulture.

This is in the middle of an aisle facing me, near the wall, impossible to pass. On the other side are huge groups, separated into squares, of people all in yellow and tan? uniforms. One woman just gave birth and was given a new pair of pants but was expected to get back in formation – I didn’t see the baby, just the extremely young Asian face and her very low “sweetheart” style uniform top.

Contains a guillotine, expected/nearly forced ‘sacrifice’

I’m in a room with seats facing the front, sitting near the back and am called on by a main elf up front. A card is drawn and somehow it’s my fault that a killer is supposed to be killed in return.

I step up and take his place and someone near me says that they would but people would miss them too and everyone is just kinda solemn but not surprised or perplexed.

I’m led around a corner which turns into a basement around the table where pillows the shape of the deck of cards are, (all hearts), except the nine which was set aside.

The effect was a hole where I was expected to lay so that a wooden contraption could drop an ax on my head was set aside. Someone says something about my preference to not be comfortable but to instead take everything calmly and I snap, yell “of course I’m angry – I’d tear down the entire culture if I could” and then I’m up and waking out. Remarks are made about how my true colors were finally showing but that I always had it (implied to be evil itself) in me.

I wake up (internally) singing Defying Gravity from Wicked and feeling this was how I became the wicked witch

There’s a maintenance worker going through an condo complex by skateboard — up and down huge flights of steps, passing by each door and then returning — dropping something off? He’s taking an extremely circuitous route but doesn’t seem to mind — he’s pretty happy and is waving to everyone.

I’m near the bottom of one of the hills and see a puddle with a fish or short eel in it — huge and alive, but laying on it’s side, nowhere to go. I consider how to help it, but know instinctively that it is the last of its kind, worth billions, and that any contact with air at all will kill it. Not wanting to be the one in charge of that kind of responsibility/ the center of that kind of battle, I keep going, knowing it could die if left alone, but that it would definitely die if I intervened and I’d be blamed.

The scene switches to the office at my parents’ house where I’m telling (my husband) Dan about the fish eel dream and he tells me to write it down. I start telling him about another a couple days before, with a small courtyard as in the Mario Party game with a wall of basketball hoops and get excited that I’m remembering. In the dream I think I’m writing everything down but then I wake up and am disappointed that I don’t remember anything.

After six nights in a row, I started to wonder whether God did New Year’s Resolutions. He seemed to be trying to get my attention, if only I’d listen and I started wondering if perhaps He had something in store for more than just me.

Not wanting to make a fool of myself, share anything too personal/non-sensical, etc. etc., I decided to both 1) prepare a blog – spending way too long on scrolling through templates when I ended up choosing the most minimalist option possible (the default) – and 2) save what I started as a draft, as a test, as a fleece as in the story of Gideon. (Judges 6-8)

If I had a seventh in a row, then God was speaking, was ok with me sharing, etc. If not, it was just a weird coincidence that it just happened to be the first six days of the year and I could go back to ignoring most dreams as too weird to validate with attention.

I woke up strangely disappointed instead of relieved when I woke without any dreams at all. It showed me 1) I had grown attached to the idea of sharing what came this year and 2) I can’t completely ignore proper sleep hygiene (I stayed up till 1:30 flipping through templates), the instructions to cast cares upon God, not be anxious, etc. and still expected profound insight – in the night or day.

Something interesting is happening and if it continues, so will I, if not, thanks for coming.

Sweet dreams!

I’m sliding the scale up and down on Leanpub’s ‘name your own price tool’, trying to decide whether publishing my own stuff is worth the cost. I had wanted to support something else and had bought a dozen of them at the highest option because it didn’t go high enough, but still questioned the value of my own.

At first, this was extremely disappointing to wake up to – at first, both were extremely hazy and they felt like the kind of dreams that don’t seem to mean much, more of a vague sense of doing something fairly utilitarian than anything else.

That initial disappointment and internal monologue thinking through how I could write about them anyway brought back 1) much more of each dream and 2) reinforced that this is important to me.

When writing down those first few words, impressions more than anything else; I thought about whether everyone was entitled to everything and whether this project could still have value if I held some back – for the sake of those close to me as much as my own.

Only upon answering for myself that I could of course write some in a private journal instead without ripping this of all value did I remember the dreams with any coherancy.

A Reddit post I read recently asking about the value of keeping decades worth of journals and the overwhelming response being to do so because they are treasures that future generations would cherish. The few responses regarding burning them or stories of grandparents doing so were seen as travesties and I can comprehend both sentiments.

I have two decades of journals weighing down a long shelf that I would seriously consider burning if the sole alternative was ‘The American Diary Project’ and most of my writing in the past decade has been designed for public consumption – just in case – rather than falling into the earlier pattern of writing as a way to avoid people/ circle through whatever I was struggling to process, but I also have two decades of journals that I do see as cherished momentos.

Not every story in my journals is mine to share and that’s what the dream felt like, that while the theme may hold some benefit for the greater good, sometimes parsing the wisdom without getting caught up in the source can be beneficial.

Both dreams centered around the difficulty of judging value, but also that some things of value should ‘cost’ more, not necessarily in monetary terms, but in terms of respecting something/ someone’s worth, including an expert’s time. Everyone having 24/7 access to everyone/everything is not healthy.

Value is difficult to judge and enforce, and it takes confidence to know what something, including an expert’s time, is worth and humility to uphold that value without diminishing anyone else’s.

driving across train tracks, never stopping on the tracks, but not giving enough room just in case. very remote area where trains are still possible but a robotic arm would not come down,

I’m watching a high school charmer try to sweettalk some other students into helping him with something. One of the others is about to get sucked in, but a sheet at the back of the charmer’s notebook is sticking out, on a bright blue paper taped to the back of the notebook, “Test questions”. The guy has no answer and is called to the principal’s office.

I once read about a student who separated out each notebook in two columns, keeping questions in one column and answers in another. That student made up questions for himself and since both he and the tests often copied verbatim from the book, there was some significant overlap.

This student however had an answer when questioned how he came across the questions – hard work.

Both students shared a confidence, but the charmer in the dream was confident in his ability to talk his way out of trouble, a skill that failed him, vs. confident in the ethicacy of his strategy.

Somehow (widespread power outage, catastrophe, camping trip, I’m not sure) there were more stars than I had ever seen before. I stay as long as I can but an called back? Those I’m with didn’t see them.

It is my first day as a substitute teacher and I am in a cluster of students, teachers, and other subs standing by large double doors. A yellow lanyard is around my neck.

I decide to leave the cluster and walk up to the huge megachurch-style rounded information desk, coming to it from behind. The lady notices me and immediately starts gushing about my husband, his gorgeous blue eyes, how everyone there loves him, etc. [IRL he’s a substitute for mostly high schools; I was there for elementary, but this fictional school had all grades].

I smile and get my assignment, a nearby third grade classroom. The teacher is there and hands me a gift bag and tells me to “go put this on”. I find a nearby restroom and find inside an extremely fancy pirate dress and hat.

I put it on in a stall and by the time I come out, the restroom has mostly (with the exception of the stalls/sinks to the side) converted to a supermarket and there’s a small bassett hound puppy sleeping nearby that I feel suddenly responsible for.

It wakes up and immediately starts running through the aisles.

The lady comes back but doesn’t chastise me for taking too long, she simply tells me to meet her in the auditorium when ready.

I am in the back seat of a car, trying to teach someone how to drive.  There are three Valerie’s in the vehicle, one in her sixties, a teen and me. It is the first time meeting in person, but they are indifferent, especially since we had met online because of having that in common.

We are in a parking lot waiting for someone and the youngest Valerie starts to back up.  I try to tell her we need to wait, but I don’t put up a huge protest and she makes it to the road and is about to turn. 

I tell her again but she just leaves and we have to circle a huge block before we get back.  Instead of insisting we turn around and go back immediately, I instruct her to take four right turns, which ends up taking us a considerable distance from where we started. It is at least a half hour to forty-five minutes before we make it back.

Ten minutes in or so, the person we left behind texts saying that they are outside waiting, accompanied with an aerial photo of themselves sitting on a bench and I respond that I know – I’m sorry but she left anyway.  We were coming back. 

After everyone gets to where they were supposed to be and the evening is over I go up to another teen who had encouraged the driver to leave and start scolding her.  She’s amused, shrugs and says it was fun. 

I then try consoling a quiet boy that I get it but to not do it again.  I realize during my speech the kid has no clue what I’m talking about since he was asleep during the whole thing.

I walk away again, not able to find the youngest Valerie who has already left. 

I realize the main person to scold/ forgive was myself for not staying in charge.

I come with someone believing we’re supposed to clean a stranger (to me)’s house and it looks small/modest on the outside and into the living room.

When we first go in, a man is sitting with his golden retriever, clearly amused that help was needed at all. I wonder why he doesn’t do it himself but stay quiet. We pass mostly through the living room, regular house sections and it opens into a massive indoor/outdoor area with high hedges, bouncy slides, arcade games and so on out back.

A family is running or will run  a food truck but I’m not sure for who. We stand there waiting for directions.

Dan and I are in a parking lot when a big blue SUV pulls up close by and the driver jumps out and starts listening to the door of the vehicle before us.

At first I think she’s checking for a dent since she hit it but she soon has the door open and unlocks it all, clears stickers from the back, including from the attached trailer.  

It becomes apparent they are stealing it and I tell Dan to take pictures (he has my phone) before it’s too late.

He doesn’t but thought he found a receipt from a specific Marathon a half hour away. I recommendd that we call Home Depot and ask whether that particular UHaul had just been bought but we don’t.

There are two other ladies in the trailer; one was startled that we saw them since none were wearing masks.

Bicycling along California Coast, focused only on the sea

I’m a first time visitor at a church looking out the back window at an open field. I remark on how lovely it is and ask whether they ever have classes outside.

I look again and the field is now a swamp and I start to question why I had recommended it but figured it might still be ok.

This is all in the span of a few seconds and by the time the lady is saying “yes, of course”, I look outside and it is now a cavern/river with a huge dropoff.

I no longer want to go out there, but the class is moving and I try to keep everyone from the edge since they didn’t seem to notice/ be concerned.

I steer them down a hill towards an actual open field and they settle in, not caring that there are kids throwing footballs over their heads.