Jan. 11th, 2021

mousme: A text icon that reads: "When the sun has set, no candle can replace it." (Sun has set)
I've always been a very vivid dreamer, for as long as I can remember. There are times when I don't dream as much (or, rather, I wake up without remembering my dreams), but for the most part dreaming is a huge part of my sleeping experience. I am often half-aware of dreaming, and sometimes can exercise some small control over what happens in my dreams. It's not really lucid dreaming, but it's something kind of like that. Usually it manifests as "starting over" some dream sequences because I somehow know that what just happened isn't the desired outcome, and sometimes it manifests as "changing the rules" partway through (a common theme in my dreams is that something scary will turn out to be a roleplaying game, and everyone in the dream stops the action to discuss the rules of the game and whether or not we're following them properly).

Anyway, I had a very vivid dream this weekend which left me a little unsettled. It wasn't a semi-conscious dream, just a run-of-the-mill dream, but I dreamt that a Member of my Quaker Meeting had died. It felt very real, and even right now I don't really understand why my subconscious came up with that, because I'm not particularly close to him or his wife, and indeed hadn't had any contact with them for nearly a year while I wasn't attending Meeting. The best I can come up with is that in my mind I think of him and his wife as being "the same age" as my parents, and so maybe I was projecting some fears about my parents onto him. It wasn't a distressing dream at all while it was happening--everything was all very matter of fact. I was more unsettled when I awoke and had to double check that I had truly dreamed he was dead and that it hadn't actually happened, because it felt so real. Sometimes my subconscious is weird.

I am trying to remember the dream I had last night, too, but it was less unusual and so unfortunately I lost it over the course of the day. I often have dreams about moving or changing houses, and I think it was one of those types of dream.

Apart from that, I had a nice, productive day today. It started out a little weird, because I woke up naturally around 06:00 but decided to go back to sleep (my alarm was set for 07:00) and then managed to oversleep a bit, which was not ideal. I got to work about 10 minutes late, but since I'm not replacing anyone on shift and my bosses aren't at the office to check what my hours are, it didn't really matter. Not to mention that I ended up staying nearly an hour late anyway, so I refuse to feel bad about it. I need to get better at getting out of the house AND the office on time when there is no external motivation for it.

Tardiness aside, I managed to get through two meetings this morning and then blitzed through a bunch of work in the afternoon, including finishing the draft of the PSE evaluation standards I'd wanted to do before. I am glad I got it done, but a little irked that I ended up having to do so much of it at the last minute. Part of that was unavoidable because other priorities cropped up, but there were some missed opportunities last week in which I could have done this. I procrastinated on it a bit because it felt like this huge thing, but once I started on it, it wasn't as long or complicated as I thought, so now I feel a little silly about it. Still, I got it done, and I think I did a pretty good job. It's now with the supervisors for their feedback for two weeks, and then I will work on the next draft.

I was going to bring the second draft to my boss, but I think I mentioned that he's stepping back from supervising me (or anyone else, I should specify), and my Director has neither the time nor the knowledge needed for this particular job, so I guess my own expertise will have to suffice for this. I don't see a problem with that, to be honest. It's just that my boss doesn't like to feel left out of the loop, but since he's deliberately stepping away from the loop, it should be fine.

[...]

I paused to Skype with my parents. They, like most people I know, are still appalled by last week's attempted coup d'état in the U.S., so we mostly talked about that. They were a little surprised that I'm of the opinion we're likely going to see more violence and more attempted "uprisings" before Biden's inauguration, but I stand by my prediction. Just because some of the mob looked silly doesn't mean we should dismiss these people as a joke: they are dangerous, and they have not been dissuaded. At least they are being de-platformed, slowly but surely. Twitter has banned Trump permanently, Amazon has kicked Parler off its servers, and right-wing accounts are being shut down. Not all of them, but it's a start.

The hot debates around "free speech" and whether or not Twitter, Facebook, etc. should ban this kind of account have me uneasy. Don't get me wrong, I am all in favour of de-platforming, but there are other implications here too. Most of us already knew or suspected, but this has pulled back the curtain and shone a big, bright spotlight on the fact that these giant mega-corporations are basically in control of almost all the media content we consume. They can shut down anyone they like at any time with no repercussions. It's fine for a private company to do what it likes with its own content, I have no beef with that. My problem is that there is literally no alternative out there other than private mega-corporations, and this really should give us pause. I don't have it fully articulated in my mind, but doubtless others out there have already written about it more eloquently. Maybe I will see if I can find any of those articles or blog posts. 

That's it for today, folks. I will be back tomorrow with more fascinating life updates. :P

Profile

mousme: A view of a woman's legs from behind, wearing knee-high rainbow socks. The rest of the picture is black and white. (Default)
mousme

July 2025

S M T W T F S
   1 2 3 4 5
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 7th, 2025 03:11 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios