Imagination

I am known to have strange dreams.

Perhaps the most famous one comes from my young childhood, in which I discover that the entire student body of my elementary school has turned into scrambled eggs, still popping and sizzling at the bottom of my bath tub, of all places. I can still remember hearing distinct, tiny voices squealing up to my ears, begging for help. Despite the immense pressure of having so many fates in my hands, I do the most logical thing: I turn on the water. Suddenly everyone grows back to their human selves and exits the bathroom single file. When I woke up and told my mom about this the next day, wondering if I should be disturbed, her attempt at consolation was praising me for being a hero. But really, when a parent is handed something like that, what else could you expect them to say?

I still have odd dreams like that from time to time, though with age I feel that they are less frequent and more difficult to remember. I used to have flying dreams quite often. In fact, there was one so detailed that I could literally feel the strong, cool air blasting every part of my body while I flew alongside a bird through royal blue skies and large, misty clouds. In perhaps one of my most ingenious dream-moments ever, I maintained my flying direction while doing 360's around the bird, looking at it from every possible angle as we soared together.

Somewhere in my early teens I gained the ability to realize that I was dreaming without waking myself up. This totally turned the tables during nightmares, as I could now forcibly end dreams on a high note. Usually if I found myself being chased by someone out to get me (once my own brother Scott was after my life) I would make a motion with my arms and legs as if I were performing an elementary backstroke, but standing up, and that's how I would get off the ground. Once I was high enough, I could move with much less dramatic motions, like Superman.

There was another time that I found myself on the run from a group of villains in an SUV who were trying to run me down in an underground parking garage. In one helpless moment I realized what state of mind I was in and decided that super speed was definitely the best option in the given scenario, and immediately the tides were entirely in my favor.

What happened? Why does growing up involve the tainting of my dreams so that my subconscious is so heavily influenced by real-life experiences? Last week I was somewhat disappointed in the fact that my most interesting dream involved going out with Jenna Fischer (Pam on "The Office"), and I strongly dislike the realistic dreams I've been having that involve my recent ex-girlfriend. Give me the simplicity of nights past where the melodramatic tales of fantasy overtake my mind and invite me to a new dimension where I can explore at my own leisure.

I don't know. Maybe I should get back into comic books.

I miss those dreams. They were a gateway into my creative mind that I feel has been locked up in storage. I've spent the last month trying to use my spare time to imagine new stories to tell through various media I'm interested in (writing, drawing, and filmmaking) and nothing remotely solid is coming up. I think there is a connection here, representing a mental block I've developed over the last few years. Maybe I am subconsciously too worried about what other people think of me and my personality. I often run into people who think my random topics of conversation are a little outrageous, and I feel like I do a good job of not caring, but maybe it's not as simple as I tell myself it is.

I'm proud of who I am and how I think. I like how I am a conservative person with a passion for creativity and art. I feel like I have a good grasp on understanding the beauty of the arts without losing my grasp on traditional values and mindsets that maintain my right-wing stance on many issues. I like that because I feel like it enables me to be open-minded and empathetic with many schools of thought and see people as layers of life experiences and backgrounds as opposed to giving in to first-impressioned labels. I feel like I can strongly believe something and know it is right without feeling like everyone else is stupid or otherwise lacking for feeling otherwise. I give a lot of credit to my imagination and think that, in the end, it is a Christlike attribute to have.

I want it back to its full capacity.