a short #dream about a big truck

Waking early after a too-short sleep often leaves me rather groggy. That’s been the case today. And that particular kind of grogginess tends to open the door for lucid dreaming experiences. So far today I’ve had a few of those.

Putting head to pillow while listening to the radio about an hour ago, I took off my glasses and began breathing deeply and slowly, relaxing, letting my eyes unfocus and my mind drift.

As if I was driving behind it, I could clearly “see” a big 18-wheeler moving quickly down a road on the west side of Bloomington, IN: a road I used to drive daily but one I’ve not seen for over a decade. The truck ahead of me turned right and headed North at the Highland Village stop light. Then it was gone, the “dream” faded and ended.

An over-heated engine

Last night was miserable for sleeping. Most of the time was spent uncomfortably tossing and turning as my system tried to fight off some hellish flu-like bug. The only sleep that came was in twp one-hour segments.

Both of these segments brought very detailed dreams. That which came in the second segment can’t pass through the self-imposed content filter I’ve set for my postings here, so I can’t say very much about it. It wasn’t unpleasant at all, but that’s about all I dare say in its regard.

The dream that came in the first segment was very vivid, too.

In my dream…

…it was like I was looking through my own eyes as I experienced it. On a hot summer day I’d pulled my pickup truck into a filling station to gas up. I was wearing jeans and black socks, but nothing else. For some strange reason I’d kicked off my boots.

As I was filling the tank with gas I noticed the truck’s engine seemed particularly hot. After replacing the hose and nozzle back in the machine and screwing the lad back on my gas tank, I popped open the hood for a look at the engine. To my surprise I saw a strange tank in the engine compartment that I couldn’t identify. And there was a steady little fountain of coolant spurting out of the top of it.

Not sure what the heck was going on, I called over to the mechanics who were working in a nearby service bay and asked if one of them could come over and look at my leak.

While I was waiting for one of the guys to come over,… I woke up.

The 100 block of North College

March opened for me with a common-themed dream.

It’s interesting to note that for the longest time, a dream like this would have been nightmarish for me. But since I’ve become more serious about tracking my dreams, and since reading up on the experience and nature of lucid dreaming, I’m able to deal with these things more calmly and rationally.

In my dream…

…I was back in a UPS package car, making deliveries to stores and businesses located in the 100 block of North College in Bloomington IN. As they were in real life, my main concerns were four:

1. being under time-pressure, knowing that I had to complete a lot of work in a limited amount of time,
2. trying to find packages that were jammed into a too-small space in the package compartment of my truck, and many packages that were loaded “out of place,” so that I could make each delivery only once, without having to return to a store with boxes I’d found later,
3. dealing with traffic on the street where I was forced to double-park, or angry drivers whose cars I’d blocked while trying to do my job, and
4. presenting myself with an air of friendly efficiency to everyone with whom I interacted.

The visuals, tactile sensations, and sounds in the dream were vividly realistic, even though none of the people in it (other than me) were folks I recognized or remembered.

A short, UPS-themed dream

Last night’s sleep was segmented into two short uncomfortable sections: a 3-hour section from 06:00 to 09:00, and a 2-hour section from Noon to 14:00 hours. Though there mau have been other dreams last night, I can only remember one from the end of the 2nd sleep period.

This dream was:

Very short. Too short, thankfully, to develop into the nightmare my UPS-themed dreams almost always become.

I was driving my UPS truck near the end of my route, late in the day. The sun had set and I was conscious of how my headlights were shining directly into the rear view mirror of the car in front of me. There wasn’t much I could do about this, it was a function of my headlights being at exactly the same height from the pavement as the car’s mirror.

I was going to pull into the parking lot of an A&W Root Beer stand, park my truck, and go inside to do my end of the day paperwork, my daily checkout routine, before returning to the Center. But I woke up before I pulled into the lot.