Why do I love my dreams too much? Or do I? Before I get there, I hesitate, and once I’m in, I want to stay. Being in the dreamworld is such a release, and I kept pushing it off.
Adventures, time traveling, new every time. Refreshing compared to facing what often feels like monotony in the waking day, or being intimidated by the goalposts before us.
Through the night—did I sleep? No, not this time. There I am in bed, staring at my phone. I’m going through pictures of myself trying to decide on a new profile picture for socials.
What productive time.
Guess it’s not all bad—there’s creativity there. I’m doing some minor collage and dithering, processing, and recoloring to make something unique, something I feel reflects my personality more.
And before I realize it, so much time has passed. Many iterations: similar photos and angles, dither on dither, too many exports. I go to bed at 7:00AM.
Best part? I ended up using just one photo. I put it on my PI.FYI profile and Bandcamp.
Usually I would enjoy my dreams, but this time I put them off. And I missed out on prime adventure hours.
So, I found myself on a different schedule, misaligned. And even in dealing with waking up late already, I decide to go on to force myself back to sleep. I slip back into phase again.
And I’m not even being intentional. Whether I continued the plot or generated a new one, I can’t recall.
Didn’t wake up until 1:50PM. Perhaps there’s some subconscious solving going on beyond my grasp. But to my conscious mind, these habits come across as escapism rather than having any conducive utility I can identify.
If I better retained and documented what’s going on in there, I’d likely have a different outlook. Sometimes I don’t want to remember though.
Despite feeling mostly like a failure, I try to get productive upon waking. In the bathtub.
While the faucet ran, I splashed around and started drafting a situation analysis for a social media strategy. I find it to be really useful, so I can approach pushing out my art and content effectively using what I learned in college.
Finally applying all those skills for myself rather than some other random business or organization that doesn’t value my work or time.
It seems like everyone just wants to grift off everyone else. Hopefully not everyone. But it’s one reason I’m afraid of applying for jobs in my field without trying my own personal projects first.
Jumped out of my soak after a few hours, and I texted Elena asking if she wants to go on a walk around the plaza. And she’s down.
We depart into the fog. It’s much warmer than I’d expected. But I started to sense the haze has nasty particles—there’s a toxicity in the air. I feel my throat form a minor itch. Hopefully I’m not getting sick.
I park the car over by the shutdown Joann’s so we can just stroll around, look into every store.
Right as we stepped onto the sidewalk, a gargantuan, human-sized clump of icicles tore loose from the roof near the pool store, crashing onto the pavement and exploding into shards that scattered through the fog.
We laughed and looked at one another, surprised.
“What if that hit somebody???”
We stopped at a few stores. Didn’t find anything at the Label Shopper, and just a rude price hike labeling at Dunham’s. With black Sharpie, someone crossed out the original price on some sunglasses and didn’t even put a replacement amount.
Of course, I thought maybe it was just some weird way of communicating it was actually cheaper than originally listed.
I brought my eyes close to try and read through the marker. I could sort of make out $29.99.
Brought it to the front counter, and the clerk scanned it. I was displeased to find out they were charging $39.99.
“Oh. Okay, I probably won’t get them then,” I said, monotone and disappointed, implying it made no sense to put something out on the shelf like that.
They agreed with me, admitting it was weird and stupid as well.
Thankfully, our Grocery Outlet visit went well.
Elena wanted to make chicken tortilla soup. She’s been making all kinds of soups off at school. And I was interested, wanting to help cook up a recipe as well. So we collected the ingredients and browsed for other things. I saw cheeseburger soup in a bag with graphics that were entirely AI-generated.
After seeing the broth price, I suggested it might be better to get some of the items cheaper at Aldi. So we started to make our way back to the car.
An employee from a nearby store was out on their smoke break, and right in front of them sat a tiny tangerine on the sidewalk.
Who discarded this? Where did it come from? We got down and pointed at it, play with it, and take photos of it. I take it home with me. I didn’t end up eating.
To this day, I don’t know where it went. Hopefully it’s not rotting under the seat in my car.
Before Aldi, we go to Sheetz and I get an egg biscuit. But soon enough, we gather our final ingredients and head home to start cooking.
My role in whipping up the soup wasn’t too involved. I helped drain the canned vegetables, shred and season the chicken, stir here and there. Then, I helped dump things from one container to another and splatter some on Elena.
Most important thing I did was probably making some spice suggestions based on what I like to put in my soups, even though this kind is far different than what I make—turmeric, ginger powder, lots of black pepper, and paprika.
It turns out very delicious, flavorful and great. It’s a chili consistency rather than a watery type of soup, very thick and hearty. Best with the tang of sour cream and plenty of tortilla chips, but good without as well.
Not much else happened that day.
Full of soup, I headed up to my room.
-Liam A. Reese
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