California Dreaming

I’ve always wanted to move to California. It’s something I think about a lot. Every. Single. Day. I even know where I want to live. You could start in Sacramento head west to the ocean, turn left and head all the way down to San Deigo, turn east and go to the I5/I8 split. Stop there. But where I want to move isn’t the focus of this blog post.

I had a dream last night, a dream so vivid I could smell, hear, and feel it. Dreaming is something rare for me. As someone who has struggled with insomnia for over a decade, I’ve found that certain sleep meds stop me from dreaming. Some by themselves, others when used in combination with each other, usually with out my doc’s tacit approval. But lately I’ve been dreaming more and sometimes it freaks me out.

Maybe it was the stress of my previous job. The pressure to always produce, to always hit the numbers. Maybe it was because there were 11 of us that contributed to my managers numbers. I should have been just over 9% of her business. But I was closer to 18% and was the largest percentage of my managers business for the last 6 years. I can’t say it was a bad thing. I rocked it. You want drugs sold? I had no problem with that or doing that. In that time I averaged 104.67% to goal. Increase my numbers? F*ck you. Go ahead. No worries, I’ll deliver. The pay was good, the stress was bad. It’s only now that I’m starting to see how much stress there really was.

But the job helped me meet some of my dreams. In college I always wanted to go to Yuma Arizona. My first job selling drugs included Yuma. After two days there I had no idea why anyone would want to live in Yuma. I could see a few scenarios. You’re a snowbird, or you are in the military doing hot weather equipment testing or you have one of a few select jobs and wanted to make a killing.

Now that I’m removed from the job by a month, I find myself still struggling to sleep. Not as much, I’m actually sleeping less but I’m waking up feeling better and more rested. My sleep drug consumption has also decreased. With a decrease in sleep drugs, one of the unintended consequences are dreams. It’s not like I had stopped dreaming completely over the last decade plus. But it’s rare when I would wake up and remember any dream. Maybe once a month or twice a month. But not weekly, not daily. It took me a while to realize this once I started taking sleep drugs. At first I was grateful just to be sleeping through the night. I felt a lot better after sleeping 7-9 hours than I did after 4 crappy hours of sleep. While I still have crappy nights of sleep, more often than not but I now have dreams.

Last night dream was, well, I’m not really sure how to describe it. This dreaming thing is in some ways new to me. But I was around a lot of people I knew many, many years ago. I could hear their voices, sometimes I’d hear their voice before I even saw the person. The feel of their skin when we hugged. I could feel their hands when shaking hands, see their eye colors and the difference between person A or B’s brown eyes. I could recall certain articles of clothing that were unique to people, color patterns, textures. I could smell what they smelled like. One person, who I ended up driving around with, I could smell the occasional cigarette they would smoke, how it mixed with their breath, their hair, their laundry detergent. It’s a unique smell. Most athletes abhor the smell of tobacco. But I really enjoy it in a few context’s. The first is right when a cigarette or cigar is lit. The initial smell of burning tobacco. After that it reeks. The other is the tobacco barns we used to run by in college. You could run down the hill on 14th Street, and on the corner of 14th and Evans there was a tobacco barn where they sold tobacco in the fall. It was always stacked in block like arrangements. The dried brown leaves. There was this smell associated with it. The sweetness mixed with the heaviness of the smell. It was the perfect blend of heavy and light.

Maybe this is old hat to those of you who dream, but I’m like a kid discovering things for the first time again. And it’s unique as well as a bit odd at times.