My kids spend a lot of time watching YouTube channels of people playing popular amateur (?? not sure how best to distinguish these games from other games) like Baldi’s Basics and Five Nights at Freddy’s (and various spin-offs of them). (My kids don’t usually actually play the games.) They also spend a lot of time watching fan-made songs and music videos about those games (and other YouTubers reviewing the music videos), so I was trying to google info on this trend, but it’s kind of hard to find much about it as a trend or genre. Maybe I’m just using the wrong search terms.

Never one to turn down an edict like that, I asked for a topic. So, without further ado, I give you:

Doors

A narrow one, rough-hewn and painted red – quaint, but I don’t think this one is mine

Passing by the pretty prefab and cheap plywood ones alike to pause briefly at a paneled oak

The age-darkened mahogany with wrought iron hardware calls to me, speaks of mysteries and moonshine

Can’t pull it open, though, and no one answers – silence only, no response can I provoke

Over there, I see one inset with beautiful stained glass, but the line to enter goes on for a mile

Another mahogany, grand and wide, you can practically feel the sense of money-ed pride

The decorative graffiti on this draws my eyes, and the impractical round one makes me smile

Dizzy from the sight of endless hall, I stumble through this open door and find myself inside

🤷‍♀️

When the sun is just setting after 9pm, my sense of time gets all messed up and then I stay up too late.

Anyway, I just wanted to write down last night’s dream while I still remember it, since it has some elements in common with my dragon dream:

I was on the run (escaping?) from who-knows-what to God-knows-where, with my kids (some? all?) in tow, when I encountered 2 cheetahs (in a treehouse maybe?). At first, they were all snarly and bitey, trying to eat me or something, but I somehow managed to soothe them with petting. It turned out, they were just mothers trying to take care of their pups (and could apparently communicate perfectly well with me). We commiserated about things and hung out for a day or two, but all the while realizing that it was a dangerous situation for us (an uneasy truce against natural inclinations). They left for an outing with their pups, with the unspoken understanding that we needed to get out of there, and quickly enough that the cheetahs couldn’t track us (or something). I hurriedly packed the kids in the car and attempted to get on the road again, but it seems like things kept slowing us down or getting in our way (no idea what things, though, and I think this is when I woke up).

So anyway, two not-quite-tame, potentially dangerous dragons… two not-quite-tame, potentially dangerous (but also anthropomorphic) cheetahs… I wonder what they might represent.

A recent conversation had me thinking this:

I have a “need” to speak with accuracy (I do not want to say something that is not true, almost in a mathematical sense), but mathematical precision in conversation can sometimes hamper communication. I generally solve this issue by adding “-ish” to the imprecise thing I’m saying (whether it makes grammatical sense or not).

Thus, I contend, it’s better in many cases to say 4.5-ish miles than to say 4.326 [whatever it was] miles.

I’ve just been watching the Stanford YouTube playlist of Robert Sapolsky’s Human Behavioral Biology lecture collection, and I’m amazed at how exciting and amazing this stuff is to me. As a programmer, I guess it makes some sense to find some connection to material that talks extensively about biological “coding” – and I keep thinking how much of a model the system of epigenetics is for developing artificial intelligence, and the implications of that, and so on. On the other hand, I’m not really that kind of coder (I rarely write code for fun), and I’m not sure what use any of this information is to me. How would I ever do something with it? And sure, I can come up with scenarios for me to use it, such as either using it to help me spot places to create smart code or as background information for a novel I could write – but, realistically? It’s just another example of me accumulating knowledge because it makes me feel good to do so. It’s like I hope that integrating all the information into the framework of my worldview will eventually generate something innovative – without any direct intent or effort by me. Spontaneous generation-like, where all of the work is going on at a level I can’t see.

This song by Caedmon’s Call has been rolling around in my head for a few days now, the last verse in particular:

You know the plans that You have for me,

And You can’t plan the end and not plan the means,

So I suppose I just need some peace

To get me to sleep.

I think it’s related to some recent thoughts about faith/grace vs. deeds, kind of a juxtaposition of the idea “godliness with contentment is great gain” against my focus (lately) on the negative aspects of my life (and how to improve). I may ramble on some more tomorrow about peace without complacency.

My dream last night has faded nearly completely by now, but what I do remember are the dragons… Two of them, about medium dog-size, only longer and skinnier. They had snake-like bodies and long, narrow lizard faces. I don’t think they had wings, but they did “breathe fire” (more accurately, could create wispy clouds of flame in their mouths and sort of spit them short distances). I somehow learned they were called dragon ladies or dragon lady lizards (something like that). One of them was following me around, while the other seemed lazy and uninterested. I was slightly concerned that they could be dangerous and hostile, so I tried to use caution and keep my distance, but I was very curious about them, because I had been sure that there were no animals that could actually breathe fire. I pulled out my phone to Google the species (and woke up).

When I do actually Google dragon lady lizard, I find a bunch of interesting links – but this is probably the most relevant.

I’ve been turning my life over and around in my head, trying to look at it from every which way, and testing knots and strands like a ball of tangled yarn – trying to see where I can get the leverage to straighten it all out and let go of the misery.

Not that I’m miserable all the time – but a lot of the time I’m not is when I’m distracting myself with escapist tactics.

Anyway, I’ve been listening to and thinking about big questions on what makes life worthwhile, and more specifically, how do I want to make my own life meaningful. But it was depressing – so much to work out, a huge mountain to climb, when I feel like I first need to get myself out of a pit.

And that’s the key, I think. I need to start where I am and do the first, most basic step (i.e., make my home functional, because until that happens, everything else is so much harder). So this is my first “one thing”, what I need to build good habits around and tear down the bad habits. I need to clean my room.

I feel embarrassed for giving my team personal thank-you cards. How embarrassing 🙄

Or, more accurately, full of the byproducts of ideas – the remnants of ideas partially conceived or half-implemented but almost always abandoned before completion. There’s the cookie cutters purchased for holiday baking that are still in the package. There’s drawers of yarn, paint, paper, containers, egg cartons, knitting needles and crochet hooks. There’s bags and bins of cloth and patterns, some have which have been combined into the hint of a piece of clothing. There’s portions of rooms with a modicum of organizational structure and the intentions to create sustainable routines.

In other words, CLUTTER.