Dreams of Frustration

I was getting ready to put this drawer back in its dresser this morning when I noticed this sums up one of the greatest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.  This isn’t art, this is her life right here.

This is a little hairy spider.

I remember a lot of my dreams because I wake up during them because of frustrating circumstances.  In essence, I remember them because I quit messing with them.

Here’s one from last night: I’m in this beautiful housing edition built in some hills with lots of tall trees and shade, walking along the streets.  It’s nice, but I want to go somewhere.  I know the address, but I find that none of the street signs have hundred-block numbers on them.  Then I look again and suddenly this street sign has six ways to turn, and only one of them seems to have a number on it, but I can’t get close enough to read the tiny number.  Screw it, I’m waking up.

I just realized that was quite similar to a real situation I had, but at that time I wasn’t frustrated.  I was blank, walking around in a suit and tennis shoes, trying to make it to my dad’s house a couple of miles away by walking through a neighborhood built on a hill between 81st and 91st on Yale in Tulsa.  I was lost, sure, but I wasn’t frustrated — it was one of the greatest, most bizarre experiences I’m sure anyone has ever enjoyed.  Somehow I was able to make it back home.

In another dream I was in a park that was built in and around a zoo, but I wanted to get to some other part of the park and I walked and walked and couldn’t find it, so I decided to cut across a thing and down a hill and ended up in a dark forest place surrounded by a tall fence and through the moonlight I could see that the things sticking to my face were spider webs.  Gong!  Wake up.

The last one I’ll tell you about was that I returned to work at a corporate job but couldn’t find my cubicle, then I couldn’t quite remember what my job was, or who my boss was.  I did have some exploding soccer balls and was distributing them by throwing them over cubicles.  Well, they didn’t explode like to blow things up — they were balls that made the sound like things were going to blow up.  Apparently it was an office gag done every Monday and it was my turn.  Anyway, I had to listen to some corporate bullshit and then decided I didn’t like my job and wanted to quit, so I asked who was my boss, they said, “Rob,” so I asked where Rob was…

They walked me to his office which was in a much more fun part of the building where they were having Hawaiian Day.  It was bright and sunny and they all had on yellowish, flower-print shirts and were still doing their corporate bullshit, but in a much better mood.

Well, Rob of course Rob wasn’t in his office and no one knew when he’d be back.  Screw it.  Gong. Wake up.

The soccer ball thing reminded me of one of the most boring jobs I had.  I think most people were bored because they did office pranks and games all day, every day, it seems.  Every once in a while a wadded paper ball would land in your cubicle from sources unknown, but you’d have an idea because you could hear snickering to the southeast.  Ah, it was the database guys.

One time I grabbed the ball and stood up and the “architect” (a term I hate for software programming, but it does seem to fit) was walking by and I acted like I was going to toss it his way.  He just grimaced and said sternly that he doesn’t play that.

That job was too easy and too slow.  The hardest part of anything was finding where it WAS and, as you know, I hate searching for things.  It’s silly.

The only task I enjoyed was fixing a bug that had been on the books for two years and that several people had worked on.  It affected only their biggest clients and they were still complaining.  I think they gave it to me as a joke.  I fixed it in 20 minutes.

It took longer to explain it to get it error checked and then to joke around about it with the architect. “Can you believe someone put a shell call in this loop?”

“Wow, a shell call in that loop?”  He replied.  I could tell it was him.

At the meeting the next morning (oh yes, every morning we had a meeting that involved spreading a little work to a lot of people)… anyway, everyone says what they did the day before.  I mentioned the bug fix.  Some people were happy and then the architect accused me of using “program enhancing drugs” on it (an insult probably because I was obviously on drugs) and I replied that I couldn’t find any in the “Zee Case” — a medical box in the pantry area with aspirin, Band Aides, and the like.

Incidentally, I learned I was fired when I checked my work email from home and it didn’t work.  It seems stupid, but I just couldn’t sit there all day and be bored, looking around on the Internet and not taking any drugs, even for the $48/hour which gloriously had been paying for drugs.

So I decided to move up my plans to run for President of the United States in the next election.  Let’s see, that was January 4th or 5th, 2008, so I had like months to get ready for the election and then I’d have some free time to write my inauguration speech.  Oh screw it, I just worked on the speech… in my head.  Writing things down is just crazy.

I suck at strategy games.

Life in this West World is a strategy game.

Holy crap, I don’t know if I’m more like the robot or Mr. Benjamin there.  I’m definitely not a homicidal robot, but he was just relentless and kept coming.  Eventually it was strategy that won the day.

I used to play Age of Empires online against my uncle and one of his friends.  It’s a resources and time strategy war game. You build stuff and then use the stuff to go invade the others’ lands.

One time Kevin’s elephants kept coming and coming and they got there quick and trampled down my guys and my walls and stuff.  I couldn’t figure out how he was doing it, so I just kept throwing my stuff in his direction.  After the game it turned out he had built another base INSIDE MY OWN WALLS and I had failed to look for it.

I play a game called Quake, but I play it like it was tennis or racquetball.  I play “free for all” which is just a bunch of guys shooting at each other.  I like that… See guy, shoot guy.  I have very fast reflexes and very good aim, but I don’t play with any sort of strategy.

Other guys like to play it like it’s a strategy game.  They prefer to play “duels” which are one on one — they’re what the professional players play (because you can have a tournament and really find out who is best)… But duels are not only about your skill as a marksman or about how well you can run around and not freak out.  They’re about fighting over the stuff on the map.  So you have to remember to go get the stuff.  That’s a strategy.

I did play a duel not long ago, which I lost, but I only lost by half his score and he was a little pissed off about it because I was obviously just running around.  One time I got him and he actually wrote, “What the hell are you doing??  Why would you charge at me like that with no armor?”  He assumed I would be using the same strategies they all know and study and employ on every map: 1st, you go here, shoot two rockets down there because there’s a 40% chance he’ll spawn there, then run over here.  Oh, so boring.

Then those guys play FFA and say that it’s all just luck.  I had won two in a row with this dueler being second when he started saying that crap.  Then he said he felt he was going to win the next one, so I replied that since it’s all just luck if we play 10 then he should win 5.  I won the next three.  So, 5 of 5… I guess it was just luck because it certainly wasn’t a coin toss.  Anyway, he couldn’t understand why I didn’t duel because, in his words, “That’s where the respect is.”

I’m obviously not into respect.

I don’t know what I’m in to.

I did finally agree to play that guy in a duel because he had really been pretty cool about being humiliated by luck and I figured I owed him a shot at what he would think would be humiliating for me (which it isn’t), but then he left.

So yes, I’ve spent the first hour of my day writing this crap.  This crap has no purpose, and it’s not part of a strategy.  Some have suggested I write a book, but writing a book involved employing a strategy.  A book really needs a reason and a direction and an ending.

This nightmare never ends.