211031 Sentinel, Predawn Nightmare

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Halloween came early for me this year.

Dreams are a part of everyone's lives. Some are vivid, some are not. I dream vividly most nights, good dreams usually fade from memory soon after rising in the morning. Nightmares always awaken me, but even those often fade away by morning coffee time. Last night's nightmare was a really bad one. It seemed to go on forever, but in fact it was between 12:37 in the early AM and 02:27 AM and it was a familiar theme. That was when I woke up in a rage and couldn't go back to sleep. I climbed out of bed and got up at 03:22 this morning wrote down my dream on some paper and made coffee.

The nightmare went like this. I was back working at a circuit board factory and just before time to clock out and go home my boss came walking up to me and handed me a failing multilayer circuit board that needed to be analyzed before I went home so the failure mechanism would be known and new circuit layers could be made to correct the failure. Someone else had begun the analysis which is never a good thing because you will then begin with a preconceived notion of what went wrong instead of looking at it with fresh eyes and thoughts.

The end of shift came, day shift left for home and night shift clocked in. The night shift immediately began setting up for their appointed tasks and shoving me and my equipment aside so they could do their work. Every step I took in my analysis was slowed down because they kept moving all of the tools I was using so they could set up for the next phase in their tasks. I wanted to finish my work and go home but their work kept interfering with mine and slowing me down. The worst of it was that they didn't seem to care one whit about the job I was trying to complete. They had their job and that was all that counted to them. That was when I started yelling, screaming and pushing people around. My work and equipment was scattered around and I was never going to finish in time to correct the problem.

Web MD says nightmares are often caused by stress, conflict or fears, trauma, emotional problems, medication or drug use. I suppose I can go with the first five, but not medications or drug use.

My night's sleep did start out well before midnight with an all too short dream about me and Joyce, both quite young and engaging in foreplay. I love those dreams. They just don't happen often enough.