[NOTE FOR THE GEEKS: A good friend of mine is involved with this year's JaveOne Conference, and he asked me if I would get a little message out to those who would like to go but who might not have all the cash to get a ticket. Basically, there's a $200 discount available for Java devs who have specific interests in specific products. There's a post all about it here. To take advantage of this promotion, register for the conference with the priority code "iphone" - ought to be an interesting show. I'd go if somebody gave me a ticket, airfare, a fancy suite, a car and driver, a special wardrobe for the conference, dinners with celebrities, a daily allowance of at least $1,000, and didn't require that I actually showed up. Seriously, though, I'd dig it, as I'm curious, and I'd love to see what the latest and greatest is in the Java world compared to the .Net world...]

[NOTE FOR ALL AND SUNDRY REGARDING THIS AND THE PAST FEW POSTS: I don't know where all this sincerity is coming from. If we stick together, we can get through it, and Neopoleon can get back to normal. Also, this post is somewhat long, so set your expectations accordingly. Finally, for those of you who loved the Purple Monster Doll post (which was, like, everybody in the whole universe), although this post is of a different nature entirely, writing it felt similar - the ending left me feeling demmed good...]

When I was a wee little Rory, I had a lot of nightmares.

Stand-alone nightmares, recurring nightmares, nightmares that were part of a series that got renewed over and over and over again due to great success in achieving their goal of scaring the dumplings out of me every night.

I learned how to wake myself up when a rerun came on. There was one where I walked down a hallway toward a door. Though I was walking, I didn't have a choice. The door was like a big, door-y Rory magnet.

It had a window, but the window was opaque. I could make out flickering lights cycling through reds and blues, but I couldn't see what was beyond. All I knew was that Evil was on the other side, and that it wouldn't benefit me in any way to make the acquaintance of The Thing Behind the Door.

The first time I had it, my terror increased as I got near the door, and it hit a point at which I couldn't handle it. I woke up, probably peeing all over the place as I did so, thought about how unpleasant the dream was, thought about it for a while, and then fell back asleep, marinating in my own urine.

That dream was just one of many like it. Over and over and over again. That hallway with that door.

Eventually, when I recognized a recurring nightmare, I would try to wake myself up by calling my own name out loud. While you're sleeping, most of your voluntary muscle control is shut off, so it was tough trying to speak. Evolution probably took care of the people who had nightmares like mine, but acted them out, and walked off cliffs or whatever.

It took tremendous effort to do it, but after a few tries, I could get out a weak "Rory..."

A couple more, and an exclamation point was added to my name: "Rory!"

In the dream, I could hear my conscious self calling to me, telling me to wake up. It worked, though it took a few shouts.

I had another nightmare in which I was sitting on the living room floor with my dad. We were playing a board game. The lights were off in the room, but the kitchen light was on, providing enough light to see the board and each other.

This nightmare was perhaps the shortest, so I didn't have time to wake myself up. I had to go through it.

This bizarre silver pig creature would run out of the kitchen over to my dad 'n me. When it got to us, the first thing it did was eat my eyelids. I had no choice but to watch because I could no longer shut my eyes.

The dream ended with me having to watch as the thing ate my father alive. It happened so quickly that neither of us had a chance to do anything.

There were so many others. While Mrs. Preston was talking and teaching my first-grade class (for all the foreigners, first-grade happens when you're six or so), I drew the various creatures and images from my nightmares on the paper where I was supposed to be practicing my italic handwriting.

I remember most of them - from the thirty-second spots advertising horror to come to the epic nightmares that spanned hours or days.

The Psych 101 explanation for this would probably be that I felt out of control, and that there were a few things going on in my life that weren't a six-year old's idea of a good time (for the foreigners, a college class with the designation "101" is a beginner's course in the subject).

Whatever the cause, it's happening again, though the dreams are much worse. That, I imagine, is the benefit of experience.

For several weeks, I've been waking up over and over throughout the night, either pulled from my nightmares when they hit that point of maximum crappiness, or when I manage to wake myself up.

Even worse, most of them have been carrying over into my waking state, so the nightmares continue for up to a minute while I'm conscious.

Every bloody night.

One theme is ex-girlfriends. I'm getting the "Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" treatment. One after the other. After the other. After the other. The only thing that could make it worse would be if they had each other's phone numbers and email addresses. When ex-girlfriends communicate, a peace of your world falls apart.

Horrific as the ex-girlfriends thing is, the other flavor of nightmare is raw and primal. These take place when I'm half-awake, but, as I was saying, continue right into my waking state. Sometimes, the voluntary muscle paralysis of sleep lingers, so I can't even move while I'm awake and my nightmares are still playing themselves out.

They come in many shapes. I've lain there as some strange, small, hovering machine with a spinning blade ripped apart the room around me.

I've been sleeping on the sofa lately (I have a thing for sleeping on sofas). I tend to sleep on my sides, tossing back and forth through the night. This, combined with the paralysis and the waking nightmares, leaves me:

1. Conscious to experience the nightmare as though it were real.

2. Paralyzed, so I can't react or sit up or run or whatever I feel I need to do.

3. When the side I'm on has me facing the back of the sofa, I feel much more vulnerable. Some people have a fear of sitting with their back to a room or an open space. I'm not one of those people, but when there's something freaky going on and I can't move or see it, it's pretty effing scary to be that exposed.

I've woken to the sound of something small and fast running around the room, knocking things over, jumping up on things, and generally causing a commotion.

The worst are the screams, growls, and these other... sounds.

Waking to screams isn't a good use of my free time, nor is waking to growls. What gets me most, though, are the sounds I can only describe as alien, angry, predatory, nearby, and the prelude to something Very Very Bad on the way. Imagine sounds like the screeching of the aliens in, well, Alien, but the sound starts low, and gradually rises in pitch and intensity until the creature launches in my direction. I wake up or snap out of it before whatever it is gets to me, and I'm thankful for it.

Again, the Psych 101 explanation is probably that I feel like I'm out control of my life. I've had a wild few years, broken down a few times, and built myself back up. But this time is different, as I'm moving out of my comfort zone - the tech industry - and establishing myself in another area that, although tech can be involved, is very generalized (it's called "Marketing 2.0" but I don't like to call it that, as I've had it with anything "2.0").

It seems like having these nightmares ought to be a bad thing, but the reality is that I'm extremely happy to be where I am, and I'm hopeful about the future. It might just be that, because of my childhood, my brain is wired to handle uncertainty through nightmares that corner, paralyze, and terrify me.

Two days ago, I spent a few hours getting driven around in an extensively modified Mini Cooper. I sat in the front passenger seat, strapped in with the harness, and tried to keep my camera level to video the deserted country roads we were tearing up at speeds up to 120 MPH (roughly 200 KPH).

Everything about the car has been tightened and locked down. Every tiny bump, pebble, and crack is communicated to the seats and steering-wheel. The vibrations are so intense that you fully expect the car to simultaneously dismantle itself and explode at every seam, screw, bolt, belt, and other miscellaneous auto thingies.

That's my job.

I don't know how I wind up getting to do things like this. It's amazing. I'm very, very fortunate.

That's why the nightmares are odd. Change may feel like a lack of control, but I'm actually back working for myself again. As this grows, I'll pick and choose my clients as I did in the past. However much it may feel like the opposite, I'm more in control now than I have been in years, and I love it.

But back to the nightmares.

I've been hanging out lately with some new people as well as old friends I haven't seen in ages. It's refreshing. When you hang out exclusively with people you've known for most of your life, you have a good idea of what they're going to say and do. It's comfortable, but you lose some of the spontaneity that arises from hearing and experiencing the unexpected from minds that are brand new to you.

I spent last night driving around town with one of these new friends. We were talking about dogs, the various shapes they come in, and so on. She told me about one dog in particular that she'd like. It's a giant, elongated, white, fluffy, flying dog named Valcore. It's the airbound canine behemoth in The Never Ending Story.

This led to childhood. I didn't talk much about my childhood, as the most prominent reminder of my childhood lately has been these recurring nightmares. She did most of the talking.

I don't usually listen to people, but I was fascinated by the things she was telling me. She had created this immense, highly-detailed world for herself when she was young. There were characters, rituals, fantastic settings, and stories that bound it all together.

The thing I loved best, though, was a memory of hers about snow.

I don't know how things were in your neighborhood when you were young, but snow was the greatest thing in the universe when I was a kid. My sister and I prayed for it, and we're steadfast atheists.

During winter, we stopped watching TV and started watching the thermometer. It was like watching a horse-race, except the race lasted for weeks.

When the thermometer got down to 34 degrees Fahrenheit, it was the alarm bell that told us it might get cold enough to snow (for the metrically-enabled, 34 F is just a couple degrees above freezing).

We'd watch with our little fists clenched, waiting with the same anticipation you feel when you're watching the lotto drawing. You have the ticket in your hand, and it feels like the process is going on forever, and that it's never going to end. It does end, of course, and you lose every time.

The nice thing about snow was that it did eventually come, but never without our help. When the thermometer read 33, we moved to the window and looked outside. We'd get on our hands and knees and say a prayer to The Snow Gods. It sometimes took days, but through persistence, we had our way and it would snow.

We got out of school, and when we didn't get out of school, we skipped it. After all that bloody work, we weren't going to let all that snow go to waste.

So that was our method.

The girl I was hanging out with, and whose childhood was that rich world that existed inside her noggin, had a far better way.

When it wasn't snowing for her, she didn't pray to The Snow Gods.

She and her friend would watch TV and wait for a forecast or a show or a movie in which snow was falling. When those images came, they leaned in to the screen, took in a deep breath, ran to the door, went outside, and blew their held-breath into the air, seeding it with the snow from the television.

That's one of the most beautiful things I've heard in a very long time. It's the innocence and novelty and hope and optimism of children.

I went home and slept right through the night.