As I write this, it’s 6:17 AM on Tuesday, and my apartment is warmer inside (about 81°F) than the air temperature outside (65°F). My little window air conditioner unit started out OK but has been struggling to keep up with the sustained 90°F and up days. I’ve got my windows open and fans blowing air outside to try to move some of the heat out. That’s how it works, right? If nothing else, the cooler air from outside feels nice for now.
Woke up in a sweat about an hour ago, which is about 45 minutes before my alarm would go off. My dreams were about group activities; sports, for one thing, specifically, football. And it was some odd mixture of American football and what Americans call soccer; sometimes the ball was an egg-shape and sometimes it was a sphere. And nobody on the field had protective gear, just loose clothing, because it was a casual game for fun, not a professional game for money.
The funny bit was, I kept having the most incredible luck. I’d just be walking across the field and the ball would bounce off me, blocking a goal. Or I’d find myself near the ball, in position to kick it away and toward someone else on my team. I wasn’t planning any of this. There was no mastery of the applied physics and geometry that someone who is good at sports would have; just me, wandering around like a chubby old guy, getting in the way in exactly the right time and place to make something good happen.
If dreams are metaphors, what is my brain telling me? My dreams, my most vivid ones, are soaked in emotion. For a long time the emotions I felt the most when I was unconscious were anxiety, fear, doubt. This dream was much lighter in tone. I was surprised and delighted whenever I managed to complete or assist with a play or a goal. I was a little nervous when the opposing team targeted me, but I was able to win them over with a joke.
I do remember a little tension around what I should have been doing. Maybe I wandered into this game to avoid something else? Yeah, OK, that tracks. But am I creating a new plot line now, or am I honestly remembering a plot line from my subconscious mind an hour or more ago? Hard to say.
I am feeling anxiety now that I’m awake, though. I worry that today is the day the 100°F weather is going to make my apartment too hot for my dad. I have to go to work, where the office has air conditioning, but dad has to stay here, with my meagre mitigations for the oncoming Fire Season. But the forecast shows that cooling temperatures are on the way. This doesn’t appear to be a Heat Dome situation, or maybe it is but it’s reaching its end. One can only hope.
There’s a small bit of anxiety about work, too. I worry that I can do this job. It’s a good job, great team of people, doing good things for the community. I couldn’t ask for much more. My self-doubt, though, might trip me up. Don’t want to get in my own way, y’know?