The Science of Sleep

Few things seem as interesting to me about our creative minds as dreams. Where they come from, what they mean, how to control them, what to interpret from them, etc. I've spent a great deal of my life chronicling, studying, and interpreting my dreams from as far back as the age of five. And I never seem to run out of material.

The other day, on Discovery Channel I learned about how our muscles, hand-eye coordination, and brains learn or re-learn the day's activities during sleep. In one segment they followed a soccer player who practiced a particular move 100s of times while awake and then described how that agility, coordination, motion, and muscle memory were reinforced during his sleeping and dreaming. Sadly, my dad's constant nagging about practice, practice, practice with everything in my life, finally make sense. And, trouble is, it appears, at least thanks to "science lite" a la the Discovery Channel, that his persistent nagging had a point.

Sadder is that for the past month and change I've been having a series of vivid dreams about all my failed past relationships, so, if the argument follows, my brain is trying to reinforce lessons learned on the romantic front. While I don't play soccer, if I have to learn in my sleep, I'd much prefer lessons in becoming a faster typist (my most frequent activity) or BETTER still, lessons on how to become a better driver (my second most often done activity). And, the latter, especially would be very much appreciated by the rest of the world.

Instead it seems that my brain is schooling me on the failures of love and men night after night after night. Maybe I can save it all that trouble by t-y-p-i-n-g out the fact that I've already learned those lessons and understand them to be true. If only I could now determine how to sign up for nocturnal tutorials in something creative, like becoming a better story teller.