Lola’s Ramblings: How do you Dream?

Lola’s Rambings is a feature on Lola’s Review where I talk about me. Usually these posts are everything that doesn’t fall under any standard header, like blog tours, book blitzes, cover reveals or review. Lola’s Ramblings posts usually are about books, but are more personal discussions of a certain topic. If an Lola’s Ramblings post is about a non-book topic it gets the non-book content posts tag. This feature was previously knows as About Me. The banner for this feature is designed by Michelle from Limabean Design.

I’ve always been interested in dreams and dreaming. It probably also helps that there still isn’t a clear explanation of why we dream and that is part of what makes dreaming so intriguing. Beside that I just have this fascination with dreams and even had this time in high school where I wrote down my dreams every morning and tried to figure out their meaning with the help of some dream explanation books. Nowadays I have given up trying to find meaning in my dreams, but I still like writing them down or talking about my dreams with my boyfriend and the differences in how we dream.
After waking from a nightmare I came up with the idea to write a post about dreaming. When I talk with my boyfriend about our dreams I am always surprised how different we dream. So I want to talk about how I dream and common themes and subjects in my dreams and then hear from you how you dream.

How do I dream?

The question mind sound a bit vague, but it was the best way to explain what I wanted to talk about, I want to talk about how I dream. What my dreams are like.

• I dream in colour. I am not sure if this uncommon or not, but I usually dream in colour. I don’t think I’ve ever dreamt in black and white and if I did I can’t remember.
• People play a huge part in my dreams. While I am not the most social person in real life, my dreams often seem to focus on people. I am with people, surrounded by people, going somewhere with people, people are after me etc. I hardly have dreams where I am alone, most of my dreams have people in them.
• I can talk and hear in my dreams, but seldomly eat. I actually talk a lot in dreams as they usually seem to involve a lot of people. I don’t just know what they mean, I actually talk, just like in real life. My boyfriend says he usually doesn’t talk in dreams, but somehow knows what people mean.
• My dreams are often pretty realistic. In my dreams things usually work like they do in real life. Sometimes there things that seem a bit off or differ from how thing works in real life, but the rules of physics still apply and there’s no magic. Things that apply in the real world also apply to my dreams. If there’s magic, it’s usually a storylike dream.
• I sometimes have “emo dreams” as I like to call them. I call them “emo dreams” basically those are dreams and when I wake up I feel almost emotionally drained. When I wake up from these dreams I feel like I’ve been through something very emotional. Usually the emotions involve anger, fear or sadness. I don’t feel rested when I wake from these dreams. I don’t like emo dreams and they are a difficult way to start your day. Usually these are dreams that I can remember pretty good when I wake up and I feel drained by them.
• I sometimes have storylike dreams. These dreams are almost like reading a book and I often realize in my dreams that they would make a good story or book. Often when I wake up I usually realize they made less sense or would be a less interesting story then I thought it would at the moment of the dream. I often want to remember lots of details about these dreams as they can be kinda fun or interesting.
• I usually can’t do awesome/supernatural things in my dreams. I can’t fly or do magic in my dreams. When I hear about people being able to do awesome stuff in their dreams I always feel a bit of envy as I can’t. I think the explanation is that I dream very realistic and in my dreams I believe it’s the normal world and I know I can’t fly or do magic. Yeah I’m a bit of a realist awake as well. The closest I come to flying is sort of hovering and then moving my arms in an attempts to get higher. Due to my fear of heights I never go very high, even if I can. But usually the highest I can fly/hover is till the top of the trees. I also hardly ever can do any magic or mystical. If I can do magic it’s very subtly or I have dreams where I know I can do magic, but in a truly ridiculous fashion I tell the bad guys I am blasting them with fire and they writhe on the floor and pretend to be hit by fire, but there’s no actual fire involved. And sometimes the bad guys don’t listen to me and just ignore my statements of how I am attacking them.
• My dreams contain weird small things that differ from real life. While my dreams are realistic they usually do contain things that don’t fit with how things are in real life. Like in my dream I know it’s my house, but it doesn’t look anything like it. Or the rat travel cage has a water bottle attached to it, while that isn’t possible in real life. There are often these small things that just don’t fit or make sense in my dreams and when I wake up I can be puzzled why they seemed normal in my dreams.
• I hardly ever have a pleasant dream. My boyfriend sometimes has dreams he calls fun or enjoyable, but I hardly have those dreams. My dreams often range from average to weird to nightmares and everything in between. But I don’t often have pleasant or funny dreams. It’s nice when do have a pleasant dream once in a while.
• I can wake myself up from dreams if I realize it’s a dream. This most often happens with nightmares, at some point I want to escape from the situation and for a short moment I realize I am dreaming and can wake myself up. I wake myself up by forcing my real eyes open, it’s an unpleasant and difficult way to wake up and I usually fall back to sleep very easily, which I don’t want to. I try to get up and go to the toilet, so I don’t fall back into the same nightmare. I hate waking up like that, although I am always glad I woke myself. I try to stay awake as long as possible to make sure I don’t fall back into the same dream.
• Sometimes I have roleplay dreams. For lack of a better word let’s call them roleplay dreams. In this dreams I am still me, but I am also someone else, like a character from a book or tv series. And sometimes my boyfriend is there too and I just knows it’s him even though he is someone else as well. These dreams often feature scenery or locations from said book or tv series, but the story is usually nothing alike. I once dreamed my boyfriend and I where aboard Voyager, but instead of a flying starship it looks like a big hotel. And when we had a meeting at the Bridge we sat at a giant wooden table. But in my dream it all made sense and I knew this was Voyager.

Next week I’ll talk about some common themes in my dreams. I had it all in one post at first, but I thought the post was too long then, so I moved that to another post.

So my question to you is:

How do you Dream?