The Happiness Project | Day 5

Yesterday, unfortunately, there was no post added on The Happiness Project. I did make a promise to write everyday for the rest of the month. However, I just ended up lying on my bed and watching SUITS the entire day.

This is what today’s post is about: not SUITS, but being unable to keep commitments.

I have always been someone who has been able to keep promises. I usually always finished my school homework on time. My lab reports in college were always filled. I am never behind on my bills. I repaid my education loan on time.

But there are other things in which I am consistently falling behind: things which are personal, which do not require external commitments. I am not able to keep the promises I make to myself.

In December, last year, I started my YouTube channel. I had been posting videos on them consistently. Recently I crossed the 100 subscribers milestone as well. My channel is growing. On the one hand, it makes me happy. On the other, I am losing motivation to keep making the videos. It does not feel like a lot of work, really. But I am struggling to come up with new ideas to execute videos every week. Besides, with every video I put out, the pressure is to get a little better every time. I do not want to put up something just for the sake of putting it.

Over the course of last two years, I have realized one thing about myself: I function best when there are set goals that I have to reach. I did well in school and college because we had set grades to get and I managed my schedule around that. Now that everything is fuzzy, I am struggling to take decisions. How much money is enough money? How much should I save every month? What should by my next five year plan?

I have made plans before, plans which were sort of people-dependent. The people moved on, and I had to forget those plans and make new ones. The solution seems simple: to remove people-dependency. Logically, I know this is the right thing. But deep inside my heart, there is this craving to do something together, to share my life with people who care, to be around people who make me smile and share the same appreciation of life as I do. Such people are hard to come by, as I am not in a situation in life where I meet a lot of people in my everyday life. Plus, I am living far from my immediate family.

Somehow, coping with all this is hard. I find it hard these days to drag myself out of bed and be the boss of my own life. But that said, at least I am making efforts to live each day, without giving up on living life. Somewhere, I have this hope that things will start getting better, somewhere down in the timeline. Somewhere, I will start meeting the people that I will need in my life. And for now, perhaps that is enough.

Of conscious dreaming

Have you ever had a dream which was so bad you wanted to change it?

Last night I dreamt of death of a close relative. And it led to a avalanche of emotions. First, I wasn’t ready to believe that it had happened (all the time knowing in a way that it was true). I felt like I was in a bad movie, where everything was going to become magically right in the end.

I tried and tried, inside my subconscious, to change, if I may say so, the script of the dream. I tried to find one loophole or the other, some shortcoming that would tell me that it was a joke. But dreams have this amazing clarity about them which make them feel like they are really real. If I was asked to describe a mirage, I would say it was a dream.

In the end, it turned out like a cheap fantasy story, where I found an old magic script, chanting which would bring the dead to life. I chanted it, again and again, indeed bringing the dead to life.

For a long time, I have tried to make a note of my dreams in a dream journal. Most of the time, I am not able to reproduce it perfectly. What I wonder is, though, is it possible for us to change the course of a dream by conscious channelization of our will-power?

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” – Paulo Coelho

I wonder if that’s the same for dreams as well. What do you think? Share with me in the Comments.

Day 13 of Writing 101: What does the Freud in you say?

A lush green field beneath. Too green. Like a tube of colour has been emptied all at once.

A free fall. The pull of gravity. A shiver.

***

A bucketful of snakes suddenly upended on the floor. Long, slimy creatures gradually covering every inch of the floor, the bed, even the bed-posts. A throbbing heart. Fearfully shifting feet. A shiver.

***

A dark, dark night. Front wheel of the bicycle slowly rising, so that the cycle is suddenly vertical. The futile attempt at pushing it to the ground. A dark shadow, taller than the highest tree appears. Chills through the spine. A shiver.

***

Car honking.

“Coming. I’m coming. Please wait. Please.”

Random pushing of the books into the bag. Hurried steps down the flight of stairs.

Oh, God! The assignment! 

Hurried, breathless steps up the flight the stairs. Car honking.

“Oh, please wait. Please wait. I am coming.”

Shifting gears. More honking. The rumbling sound of a vehicle moving away.

“Please wait. Please,I have an exam. Please.”

A shiver.

---

Spoiler Alert: Can you interpret dreams? I need you! What you read above are fragments of dreams (or should I say nightmares) that I see from time to time. Needless to say, I wake up with shivers. And voiceless screams. (The last nightmare plagued me all through my school years, a reminder of the time when the pool-car that took me to school left without taking me). At once I knew what I needed for today’s assignment, because most of these dreams are recurrent:

Today, tell a story through a series of vignettes (short, episodic scenes or anecdotes) that together read as variations on the same theme. They can each be as short or long as you see fit — they don’t have to be the same length — but they need a common feature to tie them together, whether it’s a repeated phrase, a similar setting, or the appearance of the same person.

So, if you’re indeed a dream-interpreter, don’t forget to get in touch with me!

Thanks!

Copyright © 2015 Arpita Pramanick