How Things Have Changed

My Unconscious Life: I can dream in new and strange ways.

Given my chosen field of professionalism, you would have assumed that I had a visual imagination. This seems to work in overdrive for most of my waking life. Yet, I have no access to an active dream world. I rarely, if ever, dream. And if I do, I rarely, if ever, remember them.

The few dreams I do remember are quite boring. They usually involve people and situations I am familiar with in real life. The dreams are so close to real-life that I usually just assume they were memories that actually happened. Scratch that, I don’t mean to refer to my real life as boring. It’s just that at some point, I would have liked to remember a dream where I was flying or hiking up a mountain that was actually a giant ice cream sundae.

Over the last few weeks, I can proudly say that I have not only been dreaming more often and that I can remember them, they are also weird as hell. In real life, I was working on writing a pitch for a horror tv show and was reading a lot about the amygdala. If you don’t know, the amygdala is part of the limbic system within the brain, which is responsible for emotions, survival instincts, and memory. The amygdala is sometimes associated with playing a pivotal role in triggering a state of fear. I was playing around with a story about a young Ph.D. student wanting to move his bizarre theories about removing the amygdala into practical experiments.

At the same time, I have been re-visiting the work of David Fincher — Seven, Zodiac, The Social Network, Mindhunter, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo— and I’m thinking that he, literally, got into my head. I was a big fan of his several years ago, and I wanted to see if how I was influenced by his work still seemed to make sense. It sort of still does. The vote’s still out.

I’m telling you all this because that’s what my dreams have been about. David Fincher is making a movie based on my amygdala story. I don’t really know what the whole story is about, or my role beyond being the writer. All I know is that Fincher keeps walking me around the film sets and explaining how he is going to film certain scenes. This dream is happening every few days and is a different scene each time. One dream he might be showing me the Ph.D. student’s apartment and the different camera angles he’s going to use. Another dream might be the lab where he conducts his experiments. Fincher explains all the details of the set decorations, lighting, lenses. And that’s it, that’s the dream or series of dreams. David Fincher and I are making a movie. I can’t wait to see the finished product.

My Waking Life: I miss people.

That is something I never thought I’d say out loud, but yeah, I miss people. Last weekend, a friend organized a social distancing get together with three others. Before you get all upset, my friend has a big backyard, set up chairs two hockey sticks away from each other, and we just sat and talked for a few hours. I figured out a route to get to her house through back alleys and low traffic side streets. After six weeks of not seeing anyone I know in real life, only on screens and phones, I was not prepared for how much this simple interaction hit me.

I’m generally okay with being on my own. I’ve spent most of my adult life in this way. Whether it’s living on my own or just being a single person, I’ve constructed my life so that it is full of fun and interesting people, but which also allows for times of solitude. This is something important to me.

In a similar way, I’ve built a professional life that is dependant on other people, but also parts that can be done on my own. I’ve worked remotely in a lot of different ways and figured out long ago how to communicate with colleagues/clients online, manage my own time, and set my own internal deadlines. This goes for my creative projects, which wouldn’t ever get done if I couldn’t manage myself.

I understand that some people like to work in an office. I like to do this in bursts and find it somewhat rejuvenating to be working a contract that requires me to be at a place and around people every day. But also, a part of me feels that the infrastructure requiring this is outdated. I’m also not talking about tech companies creating elaborate playground-like offices to encourage employees to never leave. I’m talking about the ability to self-manage. We are adults, we can handle things ourselves and hit deadlines, be responsible to bosses, and get things done.

That being said, I still miss being around colleagues. Perhaps this whole situation will bring about examining if we could have a more fluid approach to work, or at least, office-type work. I realize I am in a privileged position because the type of work I do can be moved back and forth from offices to remote. There’s an alchemy that happens when you’re around other people, and also when you’re by yourself. I think there could be more trust in understanding that.

On a personal note, a few weeks before we went into lockdown, I reinitialized my online dating account. Obviously, it is not possible to meet up with anyone in person, and I’m totally okay with that. Sure, there’s a lot of talk about how a positive thing is that there might be more of an emphasis on getting to know someone through writing. It might de-gamify online dating. I was kind of doing that before and it didn’t work that well then. But virtual dating? That is one line I am not willing to cross.

When I reinitialized my account, it was because I felt ready to look for a partner again. It was somewhat disappointing that meeting up wouldn’t be a possibility for a long time. In a way, this is a good thing. It’s made me sit with it and myself, and think a lot about what I’m really looking for. And perhaps more importantly, who I’m looking for.

I was getting a bit tired of going through things myself. Whatever it may be — death, loss, and now a pandemic, I guess — and wanted to try my hand at finding someone that might be interested to go through all the weird ups and downs that could be thrown at us. It certainly wasn’t in the cards for me this time around, and I’ve thought a lot about the fact that some people just might not find someone to share their life with. And I’m trying to be okay with that.

My online dating account is still active and I do check it occasionally. Sometimes if the mood strikes me, I write a message to someone that usually goes unanswered. I’m also okay with that. Sometimes I just like going through the site and seeing all the people that are out there. So many of them, just like me, looking for someone. Looking for a match.

Maybe we’ll get there, maybe not. I’m okay with either.