An interesting (and probably should have been frightening) thing happened to me during Dan’s stay at the hospital. I was extremely tired (like very very sleep deprived) and driving home. Suddenly I realized that I was in a car driving home. Ok. In order to realize I am in a car driving home I had to actually forget I was in a car driving home. I’ve had experiences where I forget a stretch of roadway, but on some level of my consciousness I always knew what I was doing. This experience was more like I let myself daydream a little then lost track of reality for a minute. When I woke out of it I seriously had to tell myself, “Oh yeah. You ARE in a car. And you ARE driving it home.”
It’s been making me wonder how close to sleep one can get without sleeping- where is the edge of the line you step over when falling asleep?
Other thoughts about sleep: I keep meeting famous people who I’ve been thinking about. Usually it’s in some normal situation in which they just happened to be my coworker or acquaintance. For instance, after the Ben Folds concert I had a dream we were working at the lab together. Normal lab things happened and he looked at some test results for me. When I woke up I felt like I had gotten to hang out with Ben.
And Lucid Dreaming: This topic also makes me sing a Franz Ferdinand song. Lucid dreams are the kind in which you realize you are dreaming. I have them sometimes. I read about them a tiny bit and learned some people use checks to determine whether they are dreaming, such as looking at a watch twice and noting the time. In a dream the watch does not make sense. I decided my check was to look at my feet because that has never happened in a dream. BUT, two nights ago I had a dream about putting on socks!! So much for that.